The dataset is available to download in Geotiff format at a resolution of 3 arc (approximately 100m at the equator). The projection is Geographic Coordinate System, WGS84. The value of each grid cell represents the distance (in kilometres) from its centre to the nearest open-water coastline.Data Source: Census data sources (for the whole 2000-2020 period)Methodology: The geodesic distance from each grid cell centre to the nearest open-water coastline has been calculated using the haversine formula and a global gridded open-water coastline dataset described to avoid edge effects at the country boundaries. The global gridded coastline datasets have been created following the description in Lloyd, C. T., H. Chamberlain, D. Kerr, G. Yetman, L. Pistolesi, F. R. Stevens, A. E. Gaughan, J. J. Nieves, G. Hornby, K. MacManus, P. Sinha, M. Bondarenko, A. Sorichetta, and A. J. Tatem, 2019. 'Global Spatio-temporally Harmonised Datasets for Producing High-resolution Gridded Population Distribution Datasets'. Big Earth Data (https://doi.org/10.1080/20964471.2019.1625151).