Received from the United States Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the LandScan global population database features the highest-accuracy population data available on the market. The population data is broken down into three levels:

  • countries
  • first-level administrative boundaries (i.e. provinces, states)
  • square-kilometre cells

This dataset has a wide range of applications across numerous fields, including business, planning, health and humanitarianism, and more. Currently, available population data ranges from 2000 to 2012.

https://uwaterloo.ca/library/geospatial/collections/us-and-world-geospatial-data-resources/landscan

world map shows population distribution, using LandScan population data