Intraurban Population Estimation with Remotely Sensed Imagery: A Developing World Perspective

According to the United Nations, this year (2008) over 50% of Earth's 6.6 billion human inhabitants will be living in urban areas. Given the increasing importance of cities as human habitat, there is a critical need for accurate population count data to support urban decision‐making. Models driven by remotely sensed imagery are one of the few economically viable alternatives available to countries with developing economies needing to measure intraurban population on a repeating basis. This article discusses the current methods to gather basic intraurban population counts from remotely sensed imagery and suggests avenues for future study. More methodological development and testing are necessary before any of the discussed methods can be operationalized for use in the developing world.