Proportion of population living in 1, 5 and 10km buffer zones for Pacific Island Countries and Territories, determined using most recent Population and Housing Census. Number of people living in 1,5 and 10km buffer zones determined by apportioning population projections.

Find more Pacific data on PDH.stat.

A recently published paper, titled “Coastal proximity of populations in 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories” details the methodology used to undertake the analysis and presents the findings. Purpose * This analysis aims to estimate populations settled in coastal areas in 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTS) using the data currently available. In addition to the coastal population estimates, the study compares the results obtained from the use of national population datasets (census) with those derived from the use of global population grids. * Accuracy and reliability from national and global datasets derived results have been evaluated to identify the most suitable options to estimate size and location of coastal populations in the region. A collaborative project between the Pacific Community (SPC), WorldFish and the University of Wollongong has produced the first detailed population estimates of people living close to the coast in the 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs).

The Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Global Delta Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates, Version 1 data set provides country-level estimates of urban, quasi-urban, rural, and total population (count), land area (square kilometers), and built-up areas in river delta- and non-delta contexts for 246 statistical areas (countries and other UN-recognized territories) for the years 1990, 2000, 2014 and 2015. The population estimates are disaggregated such that compounding risk factors including elevation, settlement patterns, and delta zones can be cross-examined. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that without significant adaptation and mitigation action, risk to coastal commUnities will increase at least one order of magnitude by 2100, placing people, property, and environmental resources at greater risk. Greater-risk zones were then generated: 1) the global extent of two low-elevation zones contiguous to the coast, one bounded by an upper elevation of 10m (LECZ10), and one by an upper elevation of 5m (LECZ05); 2) the extent of the world's major deltas; 3) the distribution of people and built-up area around the world; 4) the extents of urban centers around the world. The data are layered spatially, along with political and land/water boundaries, allowing the densities and quantities of population and built-up area, as well as levels of urbanization (defined as the share of population living in "urban centers") to be estimated for any country or region, both inside and outside the LECZs and deltas, and at two points in time (1990 and 2015). In using such estimates of populations living in 5m and 10m LECZs and outside of LECZs, policymakers can make informed decisions based on perceived exposure and vulnerability to potential damages from sea level rise.

Dwelling and population counts in elevation classes within 10Km, 5Km and 1Km of the coastline by ecozone, ecoprovince, ecoregion and ecodistrict for every fifth year starting with 2016.

Spatial datasets utilized to conduct the spatial analysis and additional information from the research article: Coastal proximity of populations in 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223249 https://sdd.spc.int/mapping-coastal

Proportion of population in Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) living in Low Elevation Coastal Zones (LECZ) of 0-10 and 0-20 meters above sea level. LECZ were delineated using the bathub method overlaid on the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Global Digital Surface Model (AW3D30). Populations within the LECZs were estimated using the Pacific Community (SPC) Statistics for Development Division’s 100m2 population grids.

Find more Pacific data on PDH.stat.

The following is an excerpt from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service species status assessment report for the coastal marten (Martes caurina), Version 2.0 (July 2018); refer to this report for additional details: 4.2 Current Range and Distribution (1980–current) All current (since 1980) verifiable marten detections were used to delineate extant population areas (EPAs) within the historical home range. The number of detections available to guide the delineation of the boundaries of the EPAs varied across the analysis area (Figure 4.2). In addition, sampling techniques varied across the range. Marten detections were buffered by 2 km and connected using a minimum convex polygon tool. Similar to methods used in the Humboldt Marten Conservation Strategy and Assessment, a 2 km buffer distance was used because most coastal marten survey and monitoring grids use a 2–km grid spacing, thus to feel confident about where animals do not occur, one would need to survey the next grid point without detections. If the total number of detections in an area was less than 5 or they were separated by greater than 5 km from other verifiable detections, the combined detections were not designated as an EPA due to the insufficient level of information to suggest a likely self–sustaining population (Slauson et al., In review, Slauson et al., In press). Because some detections did not meet this definition of a population they appear on Figure 4.3 as points but are not included in the population areas. Based on the distributions of current verifiable marten detections and adjacent suitable habitat, we identified four EPAs within coastal Oregon and northern coastal California (Figures 4.3): 1) Central Coastal Oregon Extant Population Area (CCO_EPA) 2) Southern Coastal Oregon Extant Population Area (SCO_EPA) 3) Oregon–California Border Extant Population Area (CAOR_EPA) 4) Northern Coastal California Extant Population Area (NCC_EPA) This dataset contains the four EPAs described in the SSA excerpt above.

Population growth vs distance to coast, 1991-2014 and 2011-2014. Data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Data used to produce Figure COA1; https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/coasts/topic/2016/population-growth-and-urban-development-population-growth#coasts-figure-mean-annual-growth-population

The Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates, Version 3 data set contains land areas with urban, quasi-urban, rural, and total populations (counts) within the LECZ for 234 countries and other recognized territories for the years 1990, 2000, and 2015. This data set updates initial estimates for the LECZ population by drawing on a newer collection of input data, and provides a range of estimates for at-risk population and land area. Constructing accurate estimates requires high-quality and methodologically consistent input data, and the LECZv3 evaluates multiple data sources for population totals, digital elevation model, and spatially-delimited urban classifications. Users can find the paper "Estimating Population and Urban Areas at Risk of Coastal Hazards, 1990-2015: How data choices matter" (MacManus, et al. 2021) in order to evaluate selected inputs for modeling Low Elevation Coastal Zones. According to the paper, the following are considered core data sets for the purposes of LECZv3 estimates: Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain Digital Elevation Model (MERIT-DEM), Global Human Settlement (GHSL) Population Grid R2019 and Degree of Urbanization Settlement Model Grid R2019a v2, and the Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4), Revision 11. This data set is produced by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR). To provide estimates of urban and rural populations and land areas for the years 1990, 2000, 2015 for 234 countries and statistical areas with contiguous coastal elevations of less than or equal to 5m above sea level, 5-10m above sea level, and national totals using multiple updated data sources for comparative analysis.

Human population density in the coastal zone and potential impacts of climate change underscore a growing conflict between coastal development and an encroaching shoreline. Rising sea-levels and increased storminess threaten to accelerate coastal erosion, while growing demand for coastal real estate encourages more spending to hold back the sea in spite of the shrinking federal budget for beach nourishment. As climatic drivers and federal policies for beach nourishment change, the evolution of coastline mitigation and property values is uncertain. We develop an empirically grounded, stochastic dynamic model coupling coastal property markets and shoreline evolution, including beach nourishment, and show that a large share of coastal property value reflects capitalized erosion control. The model is parameterized for coastal properties and physical forcing in North Carolina, U.S.A. and we conduct sensitivity analyses using property values spanning a wide range of sandy coastlines along the U.S. East Coast. The model shows that a sudden removal of federal nourishment subsidies, as has been proposed, could trigger a dramatic downward adjustment in coastal real estate, analogous to the bursting of a bubble. We find that the policy-induced inflation of property value grows with increased erosion from sea level rise or increased storminess, but the effect of background erosion is larger due to human behavioral feedbacks. Our results suggest that if nourishment is not a long-run strategy to manage eroding coastlines, a gradual removal is more likely to smooth the transition to more climate-resilient coastal communities.

The coastal zones of Small Island States are hotspots of human habitation and economic endeavour. In the Pacific region, as elsewhere, there are large gaps in understandings of the exposure and vulnerability of people in coastal zones. The 22 Pacific Countries and Territories (PICTs) are poorly represented in global analyses of vulnerability to seaward risks. We combine several data sources to estimate populations to zones 1, 5 and 10 km from the coastline in each of the PICTs. Regional patterns in the proximity of Pacific people to the coast are dominated by Papua New Guinea. Overall, ca. half the population of the Pacific resides within 10 km of the coast but this jumps to 97% when Papua New Guinea is excluded. A quarter of Pacific people live within 1 km of the coast, but without PNG this increases to slightly more than half. Excluding PNG, 90% of Pacific Islanders live within 5 km of the coast. All of the population in the coral atoll nations of Tokelau and Tuvalu live within a km of the ocean. Results using two global datasets, the SEDAC-CIESIN Gridded Population of the World v4 (GPWv4) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Landscan differed: Landscan under-dispersed population, overestimating numbers in urban centres and underestimating population in rural areas and GPWv4 over-dispersed the population. In addition to errors introduced by the allocation models of the two methods, errors were introduced as artefacts of allocating households to 1 km x 1 km grid cell data (30 arc–seconds) to polygons. The limited utility of LandScan and GPWv4 in advancing this analysis may be overcome with more spatially resolved census data and the inclusion of elevation above sea level as an important dimension of vulnerability.

The West Africa Coastal Vulnerability Mapping: GPW Version 4 Population Density, Preliminary Release 1, 2010, represents the number of persons per square kilometer, and was calculated by dividing an unreleased working version of the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Version 4, year 2010 population count raster for the West Africa region by a land area raster and cropping the result to within 200 kilometers of the coast. GPW provides globally consistent and spatially explicit human population information and data for use in research, policy making, and communications. This is a gridded (raster) data product that renders global population data at the scale and extent required to demonstrate the spatial relationship of human populations and the environment across the globe. The gridded data set is constructed from national or subnational input Units (usually administrative Units) of varying resolutions. The native grid cell resolution of GPWv4 is 30 arc-second, or ~1 km at the equator.

Dataset replaced by: http://data.europa.eu/euodp/data/dataset/5k3SE4aWxZXI8c0GDUerg

The Gridded Population of the World, Version 3 (GPWv3): Coastlines are derived from the land area grid to show the outlines of pixels (cells) that contain administrative units in GPWv3. The coastlines are designed for cartographic use with the GPWv3 population raster data sets. GPWv3 is produced by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) in collaboration with Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT). To provide a set of coastlines consistent with GPWv3 raster data for cartographic purposes.

The West Africa Coastal Vulnerability Mapping: Population Projections, 2030 and 2050 data set is based on an unreleased working version of the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Version 4, year 2010 population count raster but at a coarser 5 arc-minute resolution. Bryan Jones of Baruch College produced country-level projections based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 4 (SSP4). SSP4 reflects a divided world where cities that have relatively high standards of living, are attractive to internal and international migrants. In low income countries, rapidly growing rural populations live on shrinking areas of arable land due to both high population pressure and expansion of large-scale mechanized farming by international agricultural firms. This pressure induces large migration flow to the cities, contributing to fast urbanization, although urban areas do not provide many opportUnities for the poor and there is a massive expansion of slums and squatter settlements. This scenario may not be the most likely for the West Africa region, but it has internal coherence and is at least plausible.

The Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates, Version 2 data set consists of country-level estimates of urban population, rural population, total population and land area country-wide and in LECZs for years 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2100. The LECZs were derived from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), 3 arc-second (~90m) data which were post processed by ISciences LLC to include only elevations less than 20m contiguous to coastlines; and to supplement SRTM data in northern and southern latitudes. The population and land area statistics presented herein are summarized at the low coastal elevations of less than or equal to 1m, 3m, 5m, 7m, 9m, 10m, 12m, and 20m. Additionally, estimates are provided for elevations greater than 20m, and nationally. The spatial coverage of this data set includes 202 of the 232 countries and statistical areas delineated in the Gridded Rural-Urban Mapping Project version 1 (GRUMPv1) data set. The 30 omitted areas were not included because they were landlocked, or otherwise lacked coastal features. This data set makes use of the population inputs of GRUMPv1 allocated at 3 arc-seconds to match the SRTM elevations, and at 30 arc-seconds resolution in order to reflect uncertainty levels in the product resulting from the interplay of input population data resolutions (based on census Units) and the elevation data. Urban and rural areas are differentiated by the GRUMPv1 Urban Extents. This data set is produced by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

Spatial datasets utilized to conduct the spatial analysis and additional information from the research article: Coastal proximity of populations in 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223249 https://sdd.spc.int/mapping-coastal

The European Copernicus Coastal Flood Awareness System (ECFAS) project aimed at contributing to the evolution of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (https://emergency.copernicus.eu/) by demonstrating the technical and operational feasibility of a European Coastal Flood Awareness System. Specifically, ECFAS provides a much-needed solution to bolster coastal resilience to climate risk and reduce population and infrastructure exposure by monitoring and supporting disaster preparedness, two factors that are fundamental to damage prevention and recovery if a storm hits.

The ECFAS Proof-of-Concept development ran from January 2021 to December 2022. The ECFAS project was a collaboration between Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia (Italy, ECFAS Coordinator), Mercator Ocean International (France), Planetek Hellas (Greece), Collecte Localisation Satellites (France), Consorzio Futuro in Ricerca (Italy), Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), University of the Aegean (Greece), and EurOcean (Portugal), and was funded by the European Commission H2020 Framework Programme within the call LC-SPACE-18-EO-2020 - Copernicus evolution: research activities in support of the evolution of the Copernicus services.

Description of the containing files inside the Dataset.

The ECFAS Coastal Dataset represents a single access point to publicly available Pan-European datasets that provide key information for studying coastal areas. The publicly available datasets listed below have been clipped to the coastal area extent, quality-checked and assessed for completeness and usability in terms of coverage, accuracy, specifications and access. The dataset was divided at European country level, except for the Adriatic area which was extracted as a region and not at the country level due to the small size of the countries. The buffer zone of each data was 10km inland in order to be correlated with the new Copernicus product Coastal Zone LU/LC.

Specifically, the dataset includes the new Coastal LU/LC product which was implemented by the EEA and became available at the end of 2020. Additional information collected in relation to the location and characteristics of transport (road and railway) and utility networks (power plants), population density and time variability. Furthermore, some of the publicly available datasets that were used in CEMS related to the above mentioned assets were gathered such as OpenStreetMap (building footprints, road and railway network infrastructures), GeoNames (populated places but also names of administrative units, rivers and lakes, forests, hills and mountains, parks and recreational areas, etc.), the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS) and Global Human Settlement Population Grid (GHS-POP) generated by JRC. Also, the dataset contains 2 layers with statistics information regarding the population of Europe per sex and age divided in administrative units at NUTS level 3. The first layer includes information for the whole of Europe and the second layer has only the information regarding the population at the Coastal area. Finally, the dataset includes the global database of Floods protection standards. Below there are tables which present the dataset.

* Adriatic folder contains the countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina

* Malta was added to the dataset

Copernicus Land Monitoring Service:

Coastal LU/LC

Scale 1:10.000; A Copernicus hotspot product to monitor landscape dynamics in coastal zones

EU-Hydro - Coastline

Scale 1:30.000; EU-Hydro is a dataset for all European countries providing the coastline

Natura 2000

Scale 1: 100000; A Copernicus hotspot product to monitor important areas for nature conservation

European Settlement Map

Resolution 10m; A spatial raster dataset that is mapping human settlements in Europe

Imperviousness Density

Resolution 10m; The percentage of sealed area

Impervious Built-up

Resolution 10m; The part of the sealed surfaces where buildings can be found

Grassland 2018

Resolution 10m; A binary grassland/non-grassland product

Tree Cover Density 2018

Resolution 10m; Level of tree cover density in a range from 0-100%

Joint Research Center:

Global Human Settlement Population Grid
GHS-POP)

Resolution 250m; Residential population estimates for target year 2015

GHS settlement model layer
(GHS-SMOD)

Resolution 1km: The GHS Settlement Model grid delineates and classify settlement typologies via a logic of population size, population and built-up area densities

GHS-BUILT

Resolution 10m; Built-up grid derived from Sentinel-2 global image composite for reference year 2018

ENACT 2011 Population Grid

(ENACT-POP R2020A)

Resolution 1km; The ENACT is a population density for the European Union that take into account major daily and monthly population variations

JRC Open Power Plants Database (JRC-PPDB-OPEN)

Europe's open power plant database

GHS functional urban areas
(GHS-FUA R2019A)

Resolution 1km; City and its commuting zone (area of influence of the city in terms of labour market flows)

GHS Urban Centre Database
(GHS-UCDB R2019A)

Resolution 1km; Urban Centres defined by specific cut-off values on resident population and built-up surface

Additional Data:

Open Street Map (OSM)

BF, Transportation Network, Utilities Network, Places of Interest

CEMS

Data from Rapid Mapping activations in Europe

GeoNames

Populated places, Adm. units, Hydrography, Forests, Hills/Mountains, Parks, etc.

Global Administrative Areas

Administrative areas of all countries, at all levels of sub-division

NUTS3 Population Age/Sex Group

Eurostat population by age and sex statistics interescted with the NUTS3 Units

FLOPROS

A global database of FLOod PROtection Standards, which comprises information in the form of the flood return period associated with protection measures, at different spatial scales

Disclaimer:

ECFAS partners provide the data "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind. The ECFAS partners shall not be held liable resulting from the use of the information and data provided.

This project has received funding from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101004211

Due to continued coastal population growth and increased threats of erosion, current data on trends and rates of shoreline movement are required to inform shoreline and floodplain management. The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management launched the Shoreline Change Project in 1989 to identify erosion-prone areas of the coast. In 2001, a 1994 shoreline was added to calculate both long- and short-term shoreline change rates at 40-meter intervals along ocean-facing sections of the Massachusetts coast. The Coastal and Marine Geology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, has compiled reliable historical shoreline data along open-facing sections of the Massachusetts coast under the Massachusetts Shoreline Change Mapping and Analysis Project 2013 Update. Two oceanfront shorelines for Massachusetts (approximately 1,800 km in total length) were (1) delineated using 2008/09 color aerial orthoimagery, and (2) extracted from topographic LIDAR datasets (2007) obtained from NOAA's Ocean Service, Coastal Services Center. The new shorelines were integrated with existing Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and USGS historical shoreline data in order to compute long- and short-term rates using the latest version of the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS).

The Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Urban-Rural Population Estimates consists of country-level estimates of urban, rural and total population and land area country-wide and in the LECZ, if applicable. Additionally, the data set provides the number of urban extents, their population and land area that intersect the LECZ, by city-size population classifications of less than 100,000, 100,000 to 500,000, 500,000 to 1,000,000, 1,000,000 to 5,000,000, and more than 5,000,000. All estimates are based on GRUMP Alpha data products. The LECZ was generated using SRTM Digital Elevation Model data and includes all land area that is contiguous with the coast and 10 meters or less in elevation. All grids used for population, land area, urban mask, and LECZ were of 30 arc-second (~1 km ) resolution. This data set is produced by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) in collaboration with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). To provide estimates of urban and rural populations and land areas in the low elevation coastal zone.