Estimating The Population Distribution in a County Area in China Based on Impervious Surfaces

Abstract

AbstractInformation on the county level population distribution is essential for supporting a wide variety of local planning pro¬cesses. Previous researchers found that impervious surfaces had a strong linear relationship with population. But few studies have reported estimating population in a county area of China with impervious surfaces. In this paper, a population distribution model for a county area in China was established using demographic information at the county level (i.e., total population, non-agricultural population, and agricultural population) and impervious surfaces derived from Land- sat TM images. The model was conducted to distribute the population of Fujin County, Heilongjiang Province, China. Population data of 123 villages and 11 towns of Fujin County were used to evaluate the model. The results indicated that the model performs better than area-based approaches, particularly in the estimation of town populations (17.86 percent mean relative error). The results of village population estima¬tion were acceptable, with a mean relative error of 25.3 percent. As a result, impervious surfaces cannot provide height information and identify non-residential areas in developed areas of zhens (urban cores of towns). The model suggests the difficulty of non-agricultural population estimation.