After a productive one-week workshop in Panama where multiple national statical offices (NSOs) and UN agencies from different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean region participated (read more here), Dr Sarchil Qader continued his journey in the region to lead various engagements, discussions and training with NSOs. Panama is planning to conduct various socioeconomic surveys; however, an outdated sample frame can lead to biased survey results and statistical invisibility. Dr Qader led two days of training and discussions to strengthen the capacity within the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) in Panama to explore new geospatial techniques to update and customise national sampling frames to ensure accurate representation of diverse populations.
On the 21st of June, Dr Qader travelled to Bogota, Colombia to meet colleagues at the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadísticas (DANE). Colombia is planning to conduct an economic census next year and the country’s priority is to construct a set of accurate customised statistical units across the country to enable the collection and dissemination of economic census data. Dr Qader delivered a two day workshop to familiarize DANE’s colleagues with our preEA tool package and its usability to accelerate the cartography stage of the upcoming economic census in Colombia. The package can likely help the team to speed up the economic census cartography stage and provide multiple metrics that will help with resource and logistics allocation prior to field data collection. Furthermore, they discussed potential ways to collaborate and join forces to obtain funds to pursue some of the research ideas that are of interest to DANE, WorldPop and the University of Southampton.
These engagements and training were part of a recent collaboration between WorldPop/University of Southampton, the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACRO) and the Panama Country Office of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) in Panama. The Inter-American Development Bank and a grant from the University of Southampton Higher Education Innovation Fund led by Dr Sarchil Qader provided financial support for the workshop.
