Professor Stefan Leyk of the University of Colorado organized and led a virtual workshop November 30, 2020, titled "Gridded Population Data for the Sustainable Development Goals," for experts from Colombia's National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) and Paraguay's General Directorate of Statistics, Surveys, and Censuses (DGEEC). The workshop provided an overview of the development and sources of gridded population data, hands-on technical training in working with selected data, and a forum for obtaining feedback on user needs. Robert Chen, director of Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), gave introductory remarks during the opening session, and in the final session research scientist Susana Adamo provided an update in Spanish on progress and plans for the fifth version of the Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data set. Associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Geospatial Applications Greg Yetman, and research staff assistant Juan Martinez also attended.
The workshop was organized by Leyk and Maryam Rabiee of the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), under the auspices of the POPGRID Data Collaborative. Funding for the workshop was provided by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. POPGRID is an initiative launched by CIESIN in 2017 to bring together both developers and users of global georeferenced population data in support of development applications. POPGRID activities and resources are supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Leyk is also a member of SEDAC′s User Working Group.