HUMAN POPULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES DATABASE FOR THE RUSSIAN FED.

The Russian administrative boundaries and population database is part of an ongoing effort to improve global, spatially referenced demographic data holdings. Such databases are useful for a variety of applications including strategic-level agricultural research and applications in the analysis of the human dimensions of global change.

The database was prepared at UNEP/GRID-Geneva in collaboration with Denis Eckert (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / France) and the Centre Universitaire d'Ecologie Humaine/Université de Genève.

BOUNDARY AND POPULATION DATA

2486 third-level administrative units (1863 raions, 325 gorods, 298 gorsoviets) digitized by D. Eckert have been matched to the national boundaries of the widely used Digital Chart of the World. 649 cities have been digitized from various sources and adjusted to the administrative map. Population figures of the administrative units refer to the 1993 official figures whereas urban data was compiled from heterogeneous sources and projected to the year 1995.

INTERPOLATION

The interpolation of the vectorial data to a population density raster grid at a resolution of 2.5 arc-minutes was carried out according to a model developed by Uwe Deichman for a previous work on Asia (UNEP/GRID-Geneva). The basic assumption upon which the model is based is that population densities are strongly correlated with accessibility. A complex transport network (more than 170'000 arcs) was used to distribute populations and densities to a raster grid.

OUTPUTS

- a vector dataset containing the 2846 administrative units fitted to the Digital Chart of the World used as template. Population figures of the 1993 official figures and subsequent projections to year 1995 are stored in the polygon attribute file.

- a raster dataset of the interpolated and distributed population totals at a resolution of 2.5 arc-minutes

- a raster dataset of the interpolated and distributed population densities at a resolution of 2.5 arc-minutes GIF images for display on the Web