A global team, including WorldPop researchers Dr Eimear Cleary and Dr Shengjie Lai, has found that staying away from sick areas can make outbreaks worse. This happens if local case reports are not accurate. The study shows how travel habits can distort health data. It can mislead the public in a big way. When a […]
Why staying away from infection hotspots can backfire Read More »
Répondez à notre enquête de satisfaction et contribuez à façonner la suite WorldPop researchers have recently launched a high-resolution data system that harmonises fragmented displacement records to improve humanitarian aid in Nigeria and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This contemporary dataset allows decision-makers to track the movement of millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees with unprecedented
New Geospatial Mapping Tool Transforms Humanitarian Planning Read More »
Répondez à notre enquête de satisfaction et contribuez à façonner la suite WorldPop recently convened a specialised international team to transform how the world tracks and responds to forced displacement. Experts from UNHCR, IOM, UNICEF, IDMC, FCDO, the IDMC and leading global universities including University of Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and Bristol gathered at the University
Global Experts Unite to Innovate Forced Displacement Mapping for Humanitarian Aid Read More »
Répondez à notre enquête de satisfaction et contribuez à façonner la suite Dr Qianwen Duan, Research Assistant at WorldPop, recently joined international experts at the DEBIAS Workshop and Symposium to develop rigorous new standards for correcting bias in digital mobility data. This partnership works to ensure that the digital trace data used for global policy and humanitarian interventions is both representative and
WorldPop Research Informs New Standards for Bias-Adjusted Digital Data at DEBIAS 2026 Read More »
Take Our Survey and Help Shape What Comes Next Artificial intelligence is already reshaping fields like finance, transportation, and medicine. Now it is being deployed against one of humanity’s oldest and deadliest diseases: malaria. With funding provided by the Web Science Institute, WorldPop is applying its AI and spatial demography and epidemiology expertise to a
How AI and Data of Population Dynamics Could Help Eliminate Malaria Read More »
Take Our Survey and Help Shape What Comes Next At this year’s Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week in Geneva, a session explored how emerging digital data sources could help humanitarian organisations better understand how people move during crises. Representing WorldPop, Dr Sarchil Qader joined a panel examining how signals from mobile phones, online platforms, and other connected
Using Digital Trace Data to Understand Human Movement in Crises Read More »
Take Our Survey and Help Shape What Comes Next A new study by an international team led WorldPop postgraduate researcher Qianwen Duan has revealed a significant “urban exodus” across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analysing high-resolution data from 35 countries, the research team found that while many people fled dense city centres for
Researchers reveal global patterns of ‘urban exodus’ Read More »
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
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.
WorldPop develops and publishes open, high-resolution population datasets to support social, economic, and environmental development, humanitarian response, and the Sustainable Development Goals. This data is not intended, and should not be used, for purposes that discriminate against, exploit, surveil, or otherwise harm individuals or vulnerable populations; users are expected to apply it responsibly, assess the risks of their own analyses (particularly when combining it with other datasets) and are solely responsible for how they use it.
