Butuan City, Philippines Population Grids for the Year 2020 with DEGURBA Classification

Population grids of Butuan City, Philippines for the year 2020, in Esri Shapefile and TIFF (raster) formats.

The population grids were generated through disaggregation of barangay-level population data to square grid cells (e.g., 1km x 1km), following the method presented in [1], using building footprints data (Google Open Buildings) as a covariate. In detail, the total population of each census unit (barangay) is proportionally distributed across its building footprints, based on the assumption that the presence of building footprints correlates with population distribution. The population within each grid cell is then calculated by summing the proportionally distributed population from the building footprints within that cell. Before implementing the disaggregation procedure, minor cleaning of the building footprint data was conducted. This involved removing building polygons with an area of less than 6 m², as buildings below this size are assumed to be uninhabitable. This assumption is based on the minimum room size requirements outlined in the National Building Code of the Philippines (Republic Act 6541).

The 1km x 1km Shapefile contains two main attributes ('pop2020' and 'degurba'): 'pop2020' is the estimated population at each 1km x 1km grid cell for the year 2020; 'degurba' corresponds to the classification of each grid cell based on the DEGURBA (Degree of Urbanisation) classification methodology [1].

For the raster version of the data, the pixel values correspond to the total population in that pixel.

Data sources:

Building footprints © 2021 Google Open Buildings dataset, licensed under ODbL 1.0, https://sites.research.google/open-buildings/

Population Data © 2020 Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), https://psa.gov.ph/content/2020-census-population-and-housing-2020-cph-population-counts-declared-official-president 

Barangay Boundaries © 2023 PSA and NAMRIA via OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data - HDX, https://data.humdata.org/dataset/cod-ab-phl?

Reference

[1] Applying the Degree of Urbanisation A METHODOLOGICAL MANUAL TO DEFINE CITIES, TOWNS AND RURAL AREAS FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS 2021 Edition, https://dx.doi.org/10.2785/706535