WorldPop News

Photo of delegates at the Human Planet Forum, JRC Ispra, Italy - 19–21 November 2025

Progress in Population and Urban Data: Highlights from the Human Planet Forum 2025

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The 2025 Human Planet Forum gathered global experts in population modelling, urban analytics, and Earth observation for three days of scientific progress and growing collaboration. A central theme throughout the meeting was the acceleration of high-resolution, openly accessible global datasets and included a presentation by Professor Andy Tatem of our new, open Global 2 (2015-2030) […]

Progress in Population and Urban Data: Highlights from the Human Planet Forum 2025 Read More »

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WorldPop Global 2: A New Era of High-Resolution Population Data

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This week, WorldPop Director Professor Andy Tatem presented during the Monitoring, projecting and hindcasting of human settlements, infrastructure and population session at the Human Planet Forum 2025, introducing the next generation of WorldPop’s global population datasets: Global 2 (2015–2030). These new datasets represent a major step forward in how the world measures, understands, and anticipates

WorldPop Global 2: A New Era of High-Resolution Population Data Read More »

chart showing estimated spatiotemporal resolution of human mobility data sources

Movement, Population, and Infection: How Mobility Data Is Transforming Epidemic Modelling and Control

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Understanding how diseases spread in a connected world is one of the greatest challenges in modern public health. Traditional models (like the well-known Susceptible, Infectious, and Recovered (SIR) framework) often assume that everyone mixes uniformly, meaning each person has an equal chance of interacting with everyone else. But reality is far more complex. Human populations

Movement, Population, and Infection: How Mobility Data Is Transforming Epidemic Modelling and Control Read More »

Animation showing population distribution of Bogata under SSP1 scenario, 2025-2100

New Global 1 km Population Projections Released to Advance Climate and Health Research (Version 0.2)

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As part of the Wellcome-funded FuturePop project, WorldPop has recently released a new open access dataset. The data includes gridded global population distribution maps at ~1 km resolution (30 arc-seconds) for every 5-year interval from 2025 through 2100, under each of the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios (SSP1-5). The projections feed into the Coupled

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Photo of man wearing mask in street

Lessons from COVID-19: How Data and Modelling Evolved During the Pandemic

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A new MOnitoring Outbreaks for Disease surveillance in a data science context (MOOD) Horizon 2020 study published this week offers an insightful look at how disease modelling and data use changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The research, led by Dr Esther van Kleef, Technical Consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO), with WorldPop’s Professor Andy

Lessons from COVID-19: How Data and Modelling Evolved During the Pandemic Read More »

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The Future is Geospatial: Powering Africa’s Growth with Location Intelligence

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On Tuesday, October 21, Senior Research Fellow Dr. Chris Nnanatu delivered a keynote presentation at the 2025 Data Science Nigeria AI Bootcamp, where he spoke on a topic shaping Africa’s digital future: “The Future is Geospatial: Powering Africa’s Growth with Location Intelligence (LI).” Dr. Nnanatu explored how geospatial and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are transforming

The Future is Geospatial: Powering Africa’s Growth with Location Intelligence Read More »

Photo of street scene in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Advancing Wastewater Surveillance and Population Mapping at Dhaka Stakeholder Engagement Meeting

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Dr Somnath Chaudhuri, Research Fellow at WorldPop, recently visited Dhaka to participate in a key stakeholder engagement meeting for the Gates Foundation-funded project Blue Line Tracing and Wastewater Surveillance in Dhaka. The initiative, a multi-institutional collaboration involving icddr,b (formerly known as the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh), the University of Virginia, Imperial College

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Photo of Dr Jessica Espey, Deputy Director (Research) delivering the Day 2 keynote address at Evidence25, Cotonou, Benin

Highlighting African Leadership in Evidence-Informed Policymaking at Evidence25

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At the Africa Evidence Network Evidence 2025 conference in Cotonou, Benin last week, our Deputy Director (Research) Dr Jessica Espey delivered a keynote highlighting how Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are using data and research to shape smarter policy decisions across the continent. Dr Espey, co-author of a forthcoming paper with four Sub-Saharan African colleagues

Highlighting African Leadership in Evidence-Informed Policymaking at Evidence25 Read More »

Photo of the flooded areas of Borno State after the Alau dam collapsed, triggered extensive floods.

How WorldPop Data Powers Google’s Global Flood Forecasting Revolution

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As climate change drives more extreme weather patterns, the need for accurate and timely flood forecasting has never been greater. A global leader in this effort, Google’s Flood Hub, uses artificial intelligence to predict riverine floods1, and behind the scenes, WorldPop’s Global Project Population dataset is playing a pivotal role in shaping the tool’s impact.

How WorldPop Data Powers Google’s Global Flood Forecasting Revolution Read More »

Photo of Dr Sarchil Qader leading a workshop for the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics

WorldPop: Sharpening Pakistan’s Survey Tools with Geospatial Know-How

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We’re excited to be working side by side with Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) and UNFPA to modernise survey planning and sampling in Pakistan, through a strategic training programme focused on Advanced Sampling for Complex Integrated Specialized Household and Economic Surveys run by Senior Research Fellows, Dr Sarchil Qader and Dr Gianluca Boo. Dr Qader

WorldPop: Sharpening Pakistan’s Survey Tools with Geospatial Know-How Read More »

About Us

The WorldPop research programme, based in the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Southampton, is a multi-sectoral team of researchers, technicians and project specialists that produces data on population distributions and characteristics at high spatial resolution.

Initiated in October 2013 to combine The AfriPop Project, AsiaPop and AmeriPop projects, we have a diverse portfolio of projects, including large multi-million-pound collaborative projects with partner organisations, commercial data providers and international development organisations.

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  • University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom
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