![]() Therefore, significant work has been undertaken since the early 1990s to develop high-resolution gridded population datasets at global or continental scales 22. Regularly updated estimates facilitate an enhanced understanding of population size and distribution, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of targeted vaccination planning and delivery programmes 21. Moreover, accurate population estimations are fundamental to nearly all public health intervention and planning efforts 19, 20. Since such hazard events are highly unlikely to impact areas conforming to administrative units, detailed WorldPop gridded data is already regularly used to more precisely assess the size and characteristics of potentially affected population, typically age and sex 17, 18. Amongst natural and man-made disaster scenarios there is a demand for high-resolution population estimates to support the accurate assessment of the scale of an event and the required relief 13, 14, 15, 16. Between 20, 75 earthquakes occurred in the region, resulting in 226,000 deaths at a total damages cost of US$54 billion 7.Ĭonsequently, efforts towards a fuller and clearer understanding of the spatial distribution of population is crucial to a whole swathe of developmental goals. Moreover, the region is exposed to significant seismic and volcanic activity 11, due to its location along the ‘Ring of Fire’, a belt following the edge of the Pacific Ocean encountering 80% of the world’s volcanic and seismic events 12. within the first 10 m of elevation) in the region 10. Small-island territories and major coastal settlements are particularly threatened by sea-level rise 8, with an estimated 30 million people living in low-lying areas (i.e. ![]() Climate change operates as a ‘risk magnifier’, increasing the volatility and frequency of hazard events, which disproportionately impacts the populations of low- and lower middle-income countries 8, 9. Hydrometeorological phenomena including flooding, storm surges, and hurricanes are the most common and destructive hazards in the region 7, comprising 60% of all reported disasters during 2010–2016, at an estimated cost of US$278 million dollars 2. Moreover, geographic access is a principal determinant of healthcare access, and is crucial to identifying inequities in subnational health status and access to healthcare 5, 6.Īccording to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 7, Latin America and the Caribbean is the second most disaster-prone region in the world, with 152 million people impacted by 1,205 disasters between 20. However, the challenge to overcome inequalities of health outcomes derived from the intersection of determinants including socio-economic status, gender, and ethnicity at subnational levels is identified as a key step to universal health access, a key target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 2. The region has made important strides against infant and maternal mortality, communicable disease transmission, and incidence of noncommunicable disease in the last 10 years 2, largely due to economic development, and the improved capacity and flexibility of healthcare systems 3, 4. Specifically, Latin America and the Caribbean has a total population of approximately 658 million, and is expected to increase by approximately 90 million by 2050 1. The United Nations (UN) projects that the global human population will grow by 2 billion between 20 1. Population distribution datasets for each country were created at a resolution of 3 arc-seconds (approximately 100 m at the equator), and are all available from the WorldPop Data Repository. These datasets are detailed here, alongside the ‘top-down’ approach and methods to generate and validate them. Therefore, official statistics at the finest level of administrative units available have been implemented to construct an open-access repository of high-resolution gridded population datasets for 40 countries in Latin American and the Caribbean. Existing datasets are under-utilised by governments due to the non-alignment with their own statistics. In this context, contemporary and spatially detailed datasets that accurately capture the distribution of residential population are critical to appropriately inform and support environmental, health, and developmental applications at subnational levels. Latin America and the Caribbean is marked by social inequalities, whilst its total population is projected to increase to almost 760 million by 2050. “Leaving no one behind” is the fundamental objective of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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