PBL IMAGE 3.0: Global Population Density Projections Under SSP Scenarios

IMAGE 3.0 is an ecological-environmental model framework simulating the environmental impact of human activities worldwide. This dataset provides global population density projections at a 5 arc-minute grid resolution for the period 1970 to 2100 under multiple Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios. The data is produced by the IMAGE team at the Netherlands Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and is available under a CC-BY license.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term human settlement patterns based on global population density projections.
• Assessing environmental and climate impacts under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios.
• Integrating demographic data into ecological and land-use change simulations.
• Visualizing and analyzing spatial-temporal trends in global population distribution.

Strengths

• Provides long-term projections from 1970 to 2100 in 5-year increments.
• Offers data under multiple defined SSP scenarios, including baseline and mitigation pathways.
• Grid-level data is available at a relatively high spatial resolution of 5 arc-minutes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

IMAGE team, Netherlands Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties).

Collection Method

Output from the IMAGE 3.0 integrated assessment model framework.

Time Range

1970 to 2100

Freshness

Model version is from 2014; update frequency for scenario results is unknown.

Geography

Global