Sampling Dwellings from Satellite-derived Population Data for Household Surveys

Ethiopia

Context and Issues

In order to conduct a survey among populations hosting refugees in Ethiopia, Masae was asked to build a representative sample of households of urban and rural host communities around 10 refugee camps in 4 regions of Ethiopia.

Solution

Masae used WorldPop gridded population estimates*, to understand population distribution around refugee camps and identify target host communities.

Populated grid cells were then randomly selected in the areas enclosing identified host communities, using the cells' population count estimate as probability weights to ensure sample representativity. The coordinates of sampled cells (mapping one to ten dwellings) were used as target locations for field interviews.

The GPS points were made available to interviewers on Google Maps for an easy field use.

*WorldPop gridded population estimates is 100m resolution spatial dataset built by disaggregating region-level population estimates on building footprints detected from satellite images