Pilot Research on Census Mapping Based on Satellite Imagery and Web-gis

In order to revolutionize traditional census, the United Nations Statistics Division is promoting the use of GPS, digital imagery and GIS with census mapping in the new millennium [1]. The pilot research is to find a practicable solution to solve the census mapping problem in line with China’s national conditions. The general idea for the pilot research is as follows: based on high-resolution satellite imagery and necessary basic geographical data, delineating enumeration area, drawing census maps and marking buildings adapted to local conditions using web-GIS tools [2]. The enumeration areas should be mutually exclusive (non-overlapping) and exhaustive (cover the entire country) and have boundaries that are easily identifiable on the ground [1].