Degree of Urbanisation (DEGURBA) level 1 for 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean

This data release contains four harmonised gridded population datasets as well as the derived gridded "DEGURBA Level 1" datasets and associated spatial entities for 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and one country in the Caribbean (refer to the 'Geospatial Metadata' section).
The gridded population datasets comprise the "Global Human Settlement Population" dataset (GHS-POP) and three WorldPop products: "WorldPop Constrained Global Population", "WorldPop Unconstrained Global Population", and "WorldPop Bespoke National Population" datasets (refer to the "Reletaed Datasets" section) . The four population datasets were harmonised, partially using the "GHS-POPWARP v3" tool, to ensure consistency in coordinate reference system, spatial resolution, extent, and alignment, as well as population total referring to 2020. The gridded "DEGURBA Level 1" datasets were derived for each population grid using the "GHS-DUG v6.1" tool. The harmonisation process enables the comparability of the derived "DEGURBA Level 1" datasets. Details about the harmonisation process and the comparison between the "DEGURBA Level 1" datasets are given in Zhang et al. (2025; refer to the "Related Publication" section).
These data were produced by the WorldPop Research Group at the University of Southampton in partnership with the Department of Earth Science “A. Desio” of the University of Milan in the framework of the DEGURBA project, with funding from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), under grant agreement "Population and SDG indicators by Degree of Urbanisation" (2022CE16BAT035). Project partners included the WorldPop Research Group at the University of Southampton, the Department of Earth Science "A. Desio" of the University of Milan, and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC; as a no-cost project partner). The data processing was performed by Dorothea Woods, Iyanuloluwa Deborah Olowe, Alessandro Sorichetta, and Maksym Bondarenko. Project lead, coordination and oversight were provided by Alessandro Sorichetta and Andrew J. Tatem.