Andy Murdock (APMgeo) is part of the team that developed OpenPopGrid, a new open national population dataset for England and Wales. The map and geospatial data provides population estimates on a 10m grid and is derived from Office for National Statistics, 2011 Census data and Ordnance Survey Building Polygons.
Andy Murdock, project manager for OpenPopGrid remarked that “OpenPopGrid uses an intelligent mapping technique to improve the geographical representation of published Office for National Statistics 2011 Census data. This means that wehn OpenPopGrid is mapped, it gives a better picture of where people are actually likely to be living and the population density“.
OpenPopGrid has applications across multiple sectors including planning, environmental impact assessment, customer targeting, risk mapping, among others.
Speaking about the context of OpenPopGrid, Professor David Martin, the project’s academic lead, at University of Southampton, said that: “OpenPopGrid adds value to existing open data products to achieve the best possible spatial representation of population for England and Wales. It is a great example of combining the standard open products to get something even better.” See further details on the project website.