DDL Historical Urban Population

Population totals for DDL UAs, and UA-ADM splits, by year (1975–2025).

Grain
UA
Format
Parquet
Time grain
Annual
Version
v0.1
Release
2026.05
License
CC BY 4.0

Source & methodology

Source: GHS-POP R2023A — GHS population grid multitemporal (1975–2030)

Upstream population counts come from the European Commission Joint Research Centre GHS-POP R2023A multitemporal grid, released as five-year epochs from 1975 through 2030 on a 100m resolution raster (EPSG:54009). For each year, we run zonal statistics on the corresponding epoch raster against the parent DDL urban agglomeration polygon, summing pixel values to produce pop_sum and recording the contributing pixel_count. Population for UA-ADM splits are calculated by running zonal statistics against the UA-ADM split polygons. Population figures for years between the five-year epochs are linearly interpolated.

Schiavina, M., Freire, S., Carioli, A., MacManus, K. (2026). GHS-POP R2023A — GHS population grid multitemporal (1975–2030). European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC). doi:10.2905/2FF68A52-5B5B-4A22-8F40-C41DA8332CFE

Schema

NameTypeUnitsDescription
idstringDDL urban agglomeration identifier.
versionstringBoundary version hash this population estimate aligns to. Joins back to the urban agglomeration row at the same id and version.
yearint64Year of the population estimate.
pop_sumfloat64PeopleZonal-stat population total inside the parent urban agglomeration polygon for the given year.
pixel_countint64Number of raster pixels contributing to pop_sum for the given year.
sourcestringProvenance label for the raster population source.