This blog is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 13th (it will be out in January 2020), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news.

You can download an iPhone app for the 13th edition from the App Store (search for Weeks Population).

If you are a user of my textbook and would like to suggest a blog post idea, please email me at: john.weeks@sdsu.edu

Monday, November 20, 2017

Enumerating and Mapping Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

Thanks to Debbie Fugate for pointing me to a newly posted video by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees showing us how they are conducting an interactive census of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who have fled Myanmar in recent weeks. The UNHCR has a crew of about 100 enumerators who are visiting each of the households that have been set up in a huge refugee encampment housing about 500,000 people. Enumerators give each household an ID number and tag. Those tags have GPS coordinates, allowing the UN to know where each household is located physically. You can see this in the map below, that I have grabbed from their video:


On their real-time maps, they are able to click on a red dot, and the characteristics of that household are displayed. This is really pretty cool, I must say. And, of course, the hope is that with these kinds of data, the refugees will more easily receive the kind of aid they need.

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