The updating of the Census Territorial Base aims at following up the dynamics of reality, by constantly improving the operational geographic inputs of reference to carry out the data collection and disseminate the results. It involves the updating of the cartography of reference, the updated representation of the political-administrative limits, the updating of information on specific territories (subnormal agglomerates, Indigenous and quilombola lands, protected areas), on areas of distinctive data collection and the classification of the Brazilian territory into urban and rural areas with statistical purpose.

This work was carried out in a decentralized way by the IBGE State Units and branches, based on standardized concepts and methodologies, defined in technical discussions with several institutions. Since the last Population Census in 2010, five new municipalities and 364 new districts were created, which were incorporated into the IBGE registers and mappings. In rural areas, 12,807 new household agglomerates were identified, which should be visited along the survey. The Census operational base included 135,672 new enumeration areas, changing from 316,574 in 2010 to 452,246 in the 2022 Census, approximately 42% of growth, reflecting the territorial dynamics of Brazil and the improvement of the IBGE mapping techniques.

The entire updating operation was possible through PrjQGIS, which consists of the interface for the decentralized updating of the Territorial Base in the IBGE State Units and Branches, allowing the simultaneous edition of the territorial meshes, in a safe and consistent way, by a number of updaters spread in Brazil. Based on the QGIS free software, the project is completely developed by IBGE technicians, being an international reference of good practice of operational cartography and of systematization of territorial information for statistical purposes.

An important evolution in the updating of the 2022 Census Territorial Base was the use of high-resolution orbital images for the entire country. The availability of these detailed cartographic inputs allowed to improve the limits of the enumeration areas, significantly improve the classification of urban and rural areas and enhance the identification of rural and remote localities which could only be previously mapped in the field.

As a result, maps were produced for each enumeration area and for the operational divisions of the survey (municipal maps, urban maps and special maps of Indigenous lands and quilombola territories). Two copies of the maps of the enumeration areas were always produced: one with the sketch of the streets and basic cartographic information and another with the highly-detailed orbital image of the area to be enumerated. Nearly one million maps will guide the data collection teams in the entire country.

For the 2022 Census, the IBGE implemented an important tool for the systematized planning of the data collection and recording of the operational difficulties faced by the teams that cover the Brazilian territory. The Base of Operational Information of Enumeration Areas (BIOS) gathers a whole set of information of operational relevance, which aim at contributing to the planning of the data collection by previously identifying the characteristics of the enumeration areas that streamline the access to households by census agents. It gathers information that might only be raised by local consultations by multiple sources (state and municipal bodies, organizations of the civil society, community leaders, newspapers and multiple media, as well as by the knowledge of IBGE servants who follow up the daily routine of the branches).

The observed and collected subjects encompass several issues like: Indigenous lands and quilombola territories, collective housing units, improvised housing units, tenements and difficult-to-access condominiums; as well as situations of restricted safety and need of special logistics to access the enumeration area. The assessment of the subjects is carried out in the scale of the enumeration area. As a result, the enumeration areas with characteristics collected by BIOS will have that information associated with them when worked in the 2022 Census.