1. Coastal population mapping
Regional Technical Meeting on Coastal Fisheries, SPC
Phil Bright
GIS, Innovation & Dissemination Specialist
Statistics for Development Division

2. Background
SDD received many requests for coastal population figures by PICTs, SPC colleagues and Development Partners:
Coastal fisheries / food security applications
Disaster preparedness / management
Public health
For many years this has been requested
A large proportion of Pacific Islanders live on the coast and are directly dependant on fisheries for their livelihoods. These same people are also very vulnerable to cyclones, sea-level rise and other natural disasters.
The resulting data will be used for more refined analyses of vulnerability, livelihood support etc

3. Partners
Collaboration between SPC , WorldFish and ANCORS with funding support from ACIAR and Australian Aid.
ACIAR – Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

4. Buffer Zones Three buffer zones were chosen for the analysis:
1km - those living on the coast
5km - those who are within walking distance of the coast and
10km - those who are possibly too far to walk to the coast 10 5 1
South-West Santo

5. Which data was used?
Range of national and global datasets to provide the best estimate available in each of the 22 PICTs
HH locations (GPS) from Population Censuses
Global population grids – Landscan, Gridded Population of the World (GPWv4)
Reliability of estimates varies among countries as a function of geographic area of the landmass and the availability of georeferenced information 10 5 1

6. 10 5 1

7. Results Dist. to Coast (km) With PNG (%) Without PNG (%) 1 26 57 5 4590 10 54 97
Online visualisation - population-mapping/
100% of Micronesia and Polynesia is within 10km of the coast
98% of Solomon Islands and 99% of Vanuatu is within 10km of the coast
Only Guam doesn’t have 100% of their population within 5km of the coast in Micronesia and Niue/Samoa in Polynesia

8. Online Visualisation of Results

9. Online Visualisation of Results

10. Online Visualisation of Results

11. Questions How useful is this to you?
In the next iteration of the project would adding elevation be useful? Something else?