Publication: Exploring Geospatial-Based Approaches to Develop a Pre-Census National Sampling Frame in Armenia
Loading...
Published
2025-01-16
ISSN
Date
2025-01-16
Editor(s)
Abstract
The lack of a workable and accurate national sampling frame is one of the methodological constraints in conducting representative national surveys. It undermines policy and research efforts in many developing countries, particularly those experiencing significant internal displacement and relocation due to territorial and military conflicts. This paper addresses this issue by constructing the first digitized national sampling frame in Armenia, a conflict-affected developing country, where reliable and accessible national sampling frames for household and individual surveys are severely limited. The first-ever sensible digitized urban and rural classification boundaries in the country have been created for the sampling frame. The paper constructs a national sampling frame that meets international standards based on the pre-census enumeration areas tool, leveraging a semi-automatic and resource-efficient approach and the most recent data available. The generated national sampling frame offers several advantages over the existing potential sampling frames in the country, which are based on census settlements, electoral precincts, grid sampling, and old census enumeration areas. This new frame is applied to conducting the World Bank’s “Listening to Armenia” survey, demonstrating its potential for other socioeconomic surveys in the country. The method can also be employed to generate and update national sampling frames in other countries more efficiently, given that manually generating both the digitized and non-digitized national sampling frames requires substantial financial and non-financial resources.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ismailakhunova, Saida; Purevjav, Avralt-Od; Byambasuren, Tsenguunjav; Qader, Sarchil. 2025. Exploring Geospatial-Based Approaches to Develop a Pre-Census National Sampling Frame in Armenia. Policy Research Working Paper; 11039. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42698 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication A Novel Approach to the Automatic Designation of Predefined Census Enumeration Areas and Population Sampling Frames(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-08)Enumeration areas are the operational geographic units for the collection, dissemination, and analysis of census data and are often used as a national sampling frame for various types of surveys. Traditionally, enumeration areas are created by manually digitizing small geographic units on high-resolution satellite imagery or physically walking the boundaries of units, both of which are highly time, cost, and labor intensive. In addition, creating enumeration areas requires considering the size of the population and area within each unit. This is an optimization problem that can best be solved by a computer. This paper, for the first time, produces an automatic designation of predefined census enumeration areas based on high-resolution gridded population and settlement data sets and using publicly available natural and administrative boundaries. This automated approach is compared with manually digitized enumeration areas that were created in urban areas in Mogadishu and Hargeisa for the United Nations Population Estimation Survey for Somalia in 2014. The automatically generated enumeration areas are consistent with standard enumeration areas, including having identifiable boundaries to field teams on the ground, and appropriate sizing and population for coverage by an enumerator. Furthermore, the automated urban enumeration areas have no gaps. The paper extends this work to rural Somalia, for which no records exist of previous enumeration area demarcations. This work shows the time, labor, and cost-saving value of automated enumeration area delineation and points to the potential for broadly available tools that are suitable for low-income and data-poor settings but applicable to potentially wider contexts.Publication Technical Assistance on Poverty Analysis and Social Statistics : Mission on the Census of Buildings and Dwellings, Voume 4. Questionnaire Design for the Large Sample Household Survey(Washington, DC, 2009-05-05)The World Bank is developing a project to develop the capacity of the Central Administration for Statistics (CAS) of Lebanon to produce demographic and social statistics. In the absence of population censuses, the census of buildings and dwelling is one of the few sources of comprehensive data and information at the national level. The census that CAS is planning for 2010-2011 has been identified as an initial candidate for implementation-technical assistance under the current project. The CAS has requested technical support which will run over the life of the Census, from the initiation of the census to the analysis of data, which would extend over the current and the coming fiscal years. In this context, the World Bank organized a one month mission to explore the prospects for this technical assistance. The first two weeks of the mission, Monday 23, March 2009 to Saturday 4, April 2009 focused on assessment. The second two weeks, Monday 6, April 2009 to Saturday 18, April 2009, focused on technical assistance. This note is divided into four volumes. Volume I is an assessment made during the first half of the mission. Volume II addresses the questions related to the Design and Management of the Census of Buildings and Dwellings, drawing from the main conclusions of the assessment phase. Volume III addresses development of the questionnaire for the census of buildings and dwellings. It identifies the recommendations related to the design of the questionnaire(s) that will be used to conduct the next census of buildings and dwellings. Volume IV addresses design of a large-scale household survey (10 percent of households, or 50,000 households) that might be conducted concurrently with the census of buildings and dwellings to generate socio-demographic data of the kind that would be produced by a census of population and housing.Publication Surveying Migrant Households : A Comparison of Census-Based, Snowball, and Intercept Point Surveys(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)Few representative surveys of households of migrants exist, limiting the analysis of the effects of international migration on sending families. This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to compare the performance of three alternative survey methods in collecting data from Japanese-Brazilian families, many of whom send migrants to Japan. The three surveys conducted were 1) Households selected randomly from a door-to-door listing using the Brazilian Census to select census blocks; 2) A snowball survey using Nikkei community groups to select the seeds; and 3) An intercept point survey collected at Nikkei community gatherings, ethnic grocery stores, sports clubs, and other locations where family members of migrants are likely to congregate. The authors analyze how closely well-designed snowball and intercept point surveys can approach the much more expensive census-based method in terms of giving information on the characteristics of migrants, the level of remittances received, and the incidence and determinants of return migration.Publication Brazil within Brazil : Testing the Poverty Map Methodology in Minas Gerais(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02)The small-area estimation technique developed for producing poverty maps has been applied in a large number of developing countries. Opportunities to formally test the validity of this approach remain rare due to lack of appropriately detailed data. This paper compares a set of predicted welfare estimates based on this methodology against their true values, in a setting where these true values are known. A recent study draws on Monte Carlo evidence to warn that the small-area estimation methodology could significantly over-state the precision of local-level estimates of poverty, if underlying assumptions of spatial homogeneity do not hold. Despite these concerns, the findings in this paper for the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, indicate that the small-area estimation approach is able to produce estimates of welfare that line up quite closely to their true values. Although the setting considered here would seem, a priori, unlikely to meet the homogeneity conditions that have been argued to be essential for the method, confidence intervals for the poverty estimates also appear to be appropriate. However, this latter conclusion holds only after carefully controlling for community-level factors that are correlated with household level welfare.Publication Technical Assistance on Poverty Analysis and Social Statistics : Mission on the Census of Buildings and Dwellings, Volume 3. Questionnaire Design for the Census of Buildings and Dwellings(Washington, DC, 2009-05-05)The World Bank is developing a project to develop the capacity of the Central Administration for Statistics (CAS) of Lebanon to produce demographic and social statistics. In the absence of population censuses, the census of buildings and dwelling is one of the few sources of comprehensive data and information at the national level. The census that CAS is planning for 2010-2011 has been identified as an initial candidate for implementation-technical assistance under the current project. The CAS has requested technical support which will run over the life of the Census, from the initiation of the census to the analysis of data, which would extend over the current and the coming fiscal years. In this context, the World Bank organized a one month mission to explore the prospects for this technical assistance. The first two weeks of the mission, Monday 23, March 2009 to Saturday 4, April 2009 focused on assessment. The second two weeks, Monday 6, April 2009 to Saturday 18, April 2009, focused on technical assistance. This note is divided into four volumes. Volume I is an assessment made during the first half of the mission. Volume II addresses the questions related to the Design and Management of the Census of Buildings and Dwellings, drawing from the main conclusions of the assessment phase. Volume III addresses development of the questionnaire for the census of buildings and dwellings. It identifies the recommendations related to the design of the questionnaire(s) that will be used to conduct the next census of buildings and dwellings. Volume IV addresses design of a large-scale household survey (10 percent of households, or 50,000 households) that might be conducted concurrently with the census of buildings and dwellings to generate socio-demographic data of the kind that would be produced by a census of population and housing.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Republic of Congo Country Climate and Development Report - Diversifying Congo's Economy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-09)The Republic of Congo (RoC) CCDR is a new World Bank core diagnostic report that integrate climate change and development considerations. It is intended to help the country prioritize the most impactful actions that can boost adaptation and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while delivering on broader development goals. The CCDR builds on data and rigorous research and identify main pathways to reduce climate vulnerabilities and GHG emissions, including the costs and challenges as well as benefits and opportunities from doing so. The report highlights that RoC could reduce poverty in rural areas by 40% and in urban areas by 20% by 2050 by implementing more ambitious reforms to promote economic diversification and climate resilience. It also concludes that business as usual is not an option. Economic losses could reach up to 17% of GDP by 2050 if reforms to diversify the economy and attract more climate investments are not taken. Climate impacts could also increase total health costs from $92 million in 2010 to $260 million by 2050. The report identifies four priorities to promote sustainable growth in the country: (i) stronger and greener infrastructure and services in electricity, transport, water, and sanitation can deliver transformative results; (ii) More climate-ready education, health systems and social services can save lives and bring critical resources to the poorest; (iii) More investments in natural capital including climate smart agriculture and greater forest management along will help create jobs while reducing carbon emissions; (iv) better climate governance to leverage carbon markets. The forest contributes to US$260 million in timber exports and store over 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Protecting and valorizing the forest is critical to turn the country’s natural capital into wealth. The report emphasizes that the private sector has a critical role to play in mobilizing financing for an ambitious set of reforms and investments in the context of tight fiscal space. This will require raising awareness on risks and opportunities from climate change, and innovative solutions and financial sector reforms.Publication Comoros Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-18)The Union of the Comoros (The Comoros) has significant vulnerability to climate change-related risks but has considerable opportunities to strengthen preparedness and resilience against these challenges. According to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, the Comoros is the 29th-most vulnerable country to climate change and the 163rd most ready to adapt (out of 191). The Comoros archipelago is exposed to many natural hazards that adversely affect the country’s natural capital, people, and physical infrastructure. In 2014, the economic cost of climate-related disasters was estimated at 5.7 million dollars annually, equivalent to 9.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Between 2018 and 2023, as many as 11 tropical depressions or cyclones impacted the country, with Cyclone Kenneth causing the greatest damage, equivalent to 14 percent of GDP, resulting in total economic growth falling from 3.6 percent in 2018 to 1.9 percent in 2019. More than 345,000 people (40 percent of the population) were affected by the cyclone, with 185,000 people experiencing severe impacts and 12,000 people displaced. However, there is an opportunity for the country to grow more robust and shock-responsive, and to establish pre-positioned funding mechanisms to enhance future crisis response efforts. For the Comoros, adaptation and climate-resilient development are the key climate change focus areas, with the country projected to face 836 million dollars 2050 in additional costs due to climate-related impacts. Current plans to adapt to the impacts of climate change in the Comoros include efforts to improve water management, strengthen coastal protection, and develop climate-smart agriculture practices. Given the country’s reliance on its natural resource base for economic growth and mobility, protection of these resources from climate change will be essential for promoting resilient growth and development. In addition to growing the adaptive capacity of the country’s natural resource sectors, strategic economic diversification will be important to help minimize future climate impacts, and development activities will need to be undertaken in such a way as to attract low-carbon co-benefits. The Union of the Comoros is committed to addressing climate change through its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and national priorities. The country’s NDC (which was revised in 2021 for a ten-year horizon) sets ambitious targets, with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent by 2030. The country also plans to significantly increase the share of renewable energy in its energy portfolio, reaching 33 MW by 2030. This will not only promote low-carbon development but also reduce the country’s dependency on imported oil and coal, which currently make up 95 percent of the energy mix. Additionally, the Comoros has declared its intention to increase CO2 removals by 47 percent by 2030, compared to BAU.Publication Guinea-Bissau Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-23)Guinea-Bissau is endowed with a wealth of natural resources, with the highest natural capital per capita in West Africa (US3,874 dollars per capita), which could be leveraged for sustainable and resilient growth. However, Guinea-Bissau faces significant development hurdles, such as high poverty rates, political instability, and economic challenges, including an over-reliance on cashew nuts. Rural poverty has increased, and the nation's infrastructure, education, and health care systems are underdeveloped. Climate change poses a severe threat, potentially impacting agriculture, fisheries, and infrastructure. Without adaptation, it could lead to a significant cut in real GDP per capita (minus 7.3 percent by 2050) and increase in poverty (with up to over 200,000 additional poor by 2050, that is, 5 percent of the expected population, in the worst scenario). The country's low greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise, mainly due to agriculture and land-use changes, with deforestation being a major contributing factor. Although Guinea-Bissau is a low emitter, it has high mitigation ambitions, targeting a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The Nationally Determined Contribution outlines significant climate actions, with initiatives focused on forest conservation, sustainable agriculture, and community development. However, the country's political instability, institutional weaknesses, and limited financial resources pose challenges to implementing these climate commitments, which depend heavily on external funding. The financial sector's underdevelopment and vulnerability to external shocks limit its ability to support green investments, though reforms could enhance resilience. Guinea-Bissau must consider its climate financing as development financing and vice-versa, engage the private sector, and integrate climate goals with national development plans to ensure a sustainable future. Concessional climate financing is vital due to the underdeveloped financial sector and the government’s limited borrowing capacity. Addressing Guinea-Bissau's vulnerability to climate change and its structural issues requires a cohesive approach that integrates development and climate strategies. This could involve improving governance, diversifying the economy, protecting natural capital, developing human capital, and investing in sustainable agriculture and infrastructure. The transition to a more sustainable and inclusive development pathway that supports economic growth is possible, but requires focusing on key strategic sectors, enhancing institutional capacity, and creating the conditions to mobilize finance. As a highly vulnerable country, there are myriad needs in the different sectors; however, to be more efficient and effective, Guinea-Bissau should prioritize actions in a few sectors, especially actions on biodiversity, agriculture, and social protection. Low carbon development, especially in energy and forestry sectors, could provide cost-efficient solutions and attract climate finance, including from the private sector, which will support the overall development agenda.Publication Jobs in a Changing Climate: Insights from World Bank Group Country Climate and Development Reports Covering 93 Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)The World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) provide a crosscutting look at how countries’ development prospects, and the job opportunities they offer to their people, can be threatened by climate impacts and supported by climate policies. Climate change and policies affect jobs through impacts on productivity, energy and material efficiency, and physical, human, and natural capital. They can also transform employment opportunities, especially through complementary measures that help workers and firms adapt to and benefit from new technologies and production practices. Prepared by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), CCDRs integrate country perspectives, climate science and economic modeling, private sector information, and policy analysis to assess how countries can successfully grow and develop their economies and create jobs despite increasing climate risks and while achieving their climate objectives and commitments. Each CCDR starts from the country’s development priorities, opportunities, and challenges, and is developed in close consultation with governments, businesses, and civil society, ensuring the recommendations reflect national priorities. By combining evidence on adaptation, resilience, and emissions pathways, CCDRs highlight where climate action can reinforce development and job creation, and where targeted policies are needed to manage risks and smooth labor market transitions. Taken together, these elements can help create local jobs, ensure economic transitions are just and inclusive, and equip workers and firms to navigate the disruptions and opportunities of a changing climate and changing technologies.Publication Kyrgyz Republic Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-03)This Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) on the Kyrgyz Republic aims to support the country’s development goals amid a changing climate. The CCDR considers two policy scenarios up to 2050: the business-as-usual (BAU) and high-growth scenarios. As it quantifies the likely impacts of climate change on the Kyrgyz economy between now and 2050, the report highlights key government actions to best prepare for and adapt to climate impacts (referred to as “with adaptation” measures), with a particular focus on the time horizon up to 2030. The CCDR also outlines a path to net zero emissions by 2050 (referred to as “with mitigation” measures, “decarbonization,” or, simply, “net zero 2050”), highlighting associated development co-benefits.