Hundreds of decisions—how to build roads, where to send medicine, how to plan for natural disasters—depend on knowing where people live. Over the past few decades, population maps have become powerful ...

The map shows the location of the 307 rural areas analyzed in the study. The reported populations in the graphic were found to be underestimated by between 53 and 84%. Credit: Josias Láng-Ritter et.

Governments, international bodies and researchers rely on global population data for resource allocation and infrastructure planning to disease epidemiology and disaster risk management. In a study ...