LandScan 2000 Global Population Database

LandScan 2000 Global Population Database Release

The LandScan 2000 Global Population Database was developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the United States Department of Defense. This release represents the second version of LandScan. Improvements to the LandScan 2000 Global Population Database are outlined below:

Aggregate census counts and demographic characteristics (age/sex) by country and sub-national area were updated to the year 2000 through a formal, funded agreement with the International Programs Center of the United States Bureau of the Census.
The National Imagery and Mapping Agency’s (NIMA) VMAP-1 (at 1:250,000 scale) was employed for every tile available, thus greatly improving road networks, populated places, and waterbodies.
NIMA’s DTED-1 (at 3 arc second resolution) was employed for all tiles available, thus enabling us to calculate how much land within each cell is suitable for settlement.
The National Geophysical Data Center's new radiance-calibrated nighttime lights were available for the entire world, thus improving detection of small towns and villages and discrimination of density levels within large cities.
Many more of NIMA’s Controlled Image Base (CIB) tiles were available for verification and validation and for refining urban built-up areas.
The land cover database was refined substantially using VMAP-1, CIB, and/or NIMA’s scanned maps, CADRG/ADRG.

Due to these many refinements we caution against cell-by-cell comparisons between LandScan 2000 and LandScan 1998. Note also that many official censuses, including the United States Census, were conducted in the year 2000, but none were available in time for incorporation into LandScan 2000.