Gridded socioeconomic data are useful not only for visualization of the human environment; they also allow the integration of natural and social science data in analysis. In support of a number of global development activities, such as the Millennium Development Goals, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Global Natural Disaster Hotspots project, CIESIN and its partners have developed gridded socioeconomic data sets that are distributed for free. This talk will explain the approach used by CIESIN to transform census and survey data collected for administrative units to a regular grid. It will include example applications and web mapping services based on CIESIN’s gridded population, urban-rural, and poverty datasets.