projects

Improved household surveys through semi-automated mapping

Completed
Improved household surveys through semi-automated mapping
Programme
Incubator
Fund
Data Innovation Fund | Incubator
Start Date
Total Project Cost
USD 81,241.000
Country
Switzerland
Project Team
Multi-functional teams: Data, Identity Management and Analysis (DIMA) units from Regional Bureaux South Africa (RBSA) , Americas (RBA) and West and Central Africa (RBWCA)

Challenge

A lack of appropriate sampling frames makes it hard for UNHCR to get reliable data on people forced to flee from household surveys.

Solution

Three of UNHCR’s Data and Identity Management Analysis (DIMA) units teamed up to design a semiautomated delineation for enumeration areas, using satellite imagery and employing Bayesian statistical modelling techniques to estimate target population size from secondary data sources.

Impact

Readily available sampling frames leading to reliable household surveys for country operations, reducing the complexity and costs of carrying out survey activities and improving the resulting data.

Project impact

22810
Pre-enumeration areas mapped across Cameroon for urban, rural, and refugee strata.
80000
USD Total cost to model refugee populations and build the national sampling frame.
480K+
Refugees and asylum seekers in Cameroon reached via a representative sampling frame.

Other impact

Cameroon's last census was in 2005, leaving no usable digital sampling frame for refugee surveys. Funded by the Data Innovation Fund, this project — in partnership with WorldPop at the University of Southampton — used geospatial methods and UNHCR registration data to automatically generate 22,810 enumeration areas across urban, rural, and camp settings, at a fraction of traditional census costs. The methodology was directly applied to the 2024 Forced Displacement Survey in Cameroon, has since been replicated in Armenia, and is replicable globally. The peer-reviewed findings were published open-access in the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology in April 2026.