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Research group

WorldPop

A resident of Ganvie stilt village in Benin navigates a boat through water

Regularly updating data on population numbers and characteristics to help with effective governance and efficient allocation of resources.

About

We work to ensure that everyone is mapped and counted in decision making. We develop geospatial integration methods to make detailed demographic datasets. Our work features in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our datasets are used by governments, international agencies, academia, NGOs and the private sector. We work closely with the United Nation agencies and national statistical offices in low and middle-income countries. Our approaches are designed to maximise uptake and impact, and to strengthen local capacity.

Our work focus areas for development and implementation cover population distributions, demographics and dynamics in resource-poor settings. Our geostatistical modelling integrates data from traditional sources including censuses, and satellite and cellphone datasets.

We produce high resolution maps of:

  • age/sex structures
  • births
  • poverty
  • access to services
  • vaccination coverage

We also develop modelling frameworks for subnational migration flows, urban change and disease spread.

WorldPop is made up of more than 30 members of staff, including demographers, geographers, ecologists, statisticians, epidemiologists and computer scientists.

Principal funders and collaborators include:

  • the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • UK Department for International Development
  • the World Bank

Research highlights

People, projects and publications

People

Professor Andrew Tatem

Personal Chair

Research interests

  • Developing approaches to map population distributions, demographics and dynamics through complementing traditional datasources (census, survey, registries) with new forms of geospatial data from e.g. satellite imagery and mobile devices.
  • Understanding the drivers of small area heterogeneities in population health and development in low and middle income settings.
  • The use of high resolution demographic and mobility data for improving understanding and modelling of pathogen dynamics.

Email: a.j.tatem@soton.ac.uk

Address: B39, West Highfield Campus, University Road, SO17 1BJ

Dr Assane Gadiaga

Research Fellow

Dr Attila Lazar PhD, MSc, BEng

Principal Research Fellow GRID3 Project

Email: a.lazar@soton.ac.uk

Address: B39, West Highfield Campus, University Road, SO17 1BJ

Dr Carla Pezzulo

Research interests

  • Socio-economic determinants of poverty, health and education in low and middle-income countries
  • Development Studies and Sustainable Development Goals
  • Spatial analysis of demographics and socio-economic indicators

Email: c.pezzulo@soton.ac.uk

Address: B39, West Highfield Campus, University Road, SO17 1BJ

Dr Chris Nnanatu

Senior Research Fellow

Accepting applications from PhD students

Dr Christopher Lloyd MSci, MSc, PhD, FGS

Senior Research Fellow

Research interests

  • GIS and Remote Sensing
  • Open Source Geospatial Tools
  • Building Classification using Machine Learning

Email: c.t.lloyd@soton.ac.uk

Address: B39, West Highfield Campus, University Road, SO17 1BJ

Miss Duygu Cihan PhD

Research Fellow

Research interests

  • Social and demographic issues through quantitative analysis
  • Demographic methods for age and sex structring
  • Population interpolation and extrapolation

Mx Édith Darin

Enterprise Fellow GRID3 programme

Dr Edson Utazi

Lecturer

Accepting applications from PhD students

Email: c.e.utazi@soton.ac.uk

Address: B39, West Highfield Campus, University Road, SO17 1BJ

Dr Eimear Cleary

Research Fellow
WorldPop complements traditional population data sources with dynamic, high-resolution data from satellites, surveys and cellphones to map human population distributions at high resolution, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that everyone, everywhere is counted in decision making.
Personal Chair

Contact information

Contact information

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