Associate Professor of Spatial Data Science @unisouthampton. Researcher @WorldPopProject. Interested in methods for mapping health and development indicators.
Southampton, England
Joined December 2010
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Submissions are open for this Special Issue on "Statistical Methods in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health Research" to be published in the journal Mathematics. We are looking for papers developing new methods or applying existing ones to RMNCAHR.
🌍 I’m excited to be attending the 2025 annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) in Toronto, Canada.
I’ll be giving an invited talk on our #VaxPop work titled:
🗺️ “High-resolution risk mapping of Guinea worm disease: Harnessing remote sensing, geostatistics, and machine learning models.” 📅 Session: Symposium 131 🕐 Date & Time: Wednesday, November 12 | 12:45 PM – 2:30 PM
I am delighted to be organizing a session on “Recent advances in geospatial approaches for mapping populations and their characteristics to support the SDGs" at this week's @RoyalStatSoc annual conference.
📍 Session details: Wednesday, 3rd September 2025 | 13:50 – 15:10 PM
“Small area population estimation in resource-poor settings using health intervention campaign data” — Dr. Christopher Nnanatu (WorldPop)
Chigozie Edson Utazi retweeted
🚨 CHEVENING SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS 🇬🇧
📍Application Timeline:
》Opens: 5th August 2025 (12:00 UTC)
》Closes: 7th October 2025 (12:00 UTC)
📍Eligibility Criteria:
To be eligible for a Chevening Scholarship, you must:
▪︎ Be a citizen of a Chevening-eligible country or territory.
▪︎ Commit to returning to your home country for at least two years after your scholarship ends.
▪︎ Have at least two years (equivalent to 2,800 hours) of work experience.
▪︎ Hold an undergraduate degree that qualifies you for a UK master’s programme.
▪︎ Apply to three different and eligible UK university courses.
▪︎ You must have received an unconditional offer from at least one of these course choices by the references and education documents deadline listed on the application timeline.
📍PS: Two new updates to Chevening’s eligibility criteria this year:
■ Only work experience gained after the date of your graduation will count towards the two-year requirement.
E.g:
》Full-time employment
》Part-time employment
》Voluntary work
》Paid or unpaid internships
Experience gained while studying will NO longer be eligible.
■ New and updated essay questions, including a stronger focus on how your course and university choices connect to global priority areas, such as:
》Promoting growth and prosperity
Building resilience in a climate-vulnerable world.
》Strengthening security and stability in a volatile world.
》Supporting development for more inclusive and effective societies.
》The word limit for essay responses has also been reduced from 500 to 300 words.
This week at the 2025 Spatial Statistics Conference, I presented VaxPop’s latest research on high-resolution, age-structured mapping of vaccination coverage using a spatially varying coefficient model.
📄 Read the preprint here:
👉 lnkd.in/d9wxj28j – at South Holland, The Netherlands
Chigozie Edson Utazi retweeted
🚨New research: Subnational variations in the quality of household survey data in sub-Saharan Africa
Easy-to-access #geospatial estimates of #survey data quality highlight the need to invest in better targeting of household surveys in remote areas.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-5…
ALT Graphic showing a–i Proportion of reported ages ending in 5 or 0 of all adults between 23 and 62 (’age heaping’) at (a) 5 × 5 km grid-cell level; (b) district level (admin-2); (c) country level. Share of interviewed women (15–49 years) with either the year or month of birth missing relative to all interviewed women (’incomplete age’) at (d) 5 × 5 km grid-cell level; (e) district level (admin-2); (f) country level. Missing or biologically implausible values for the attained heights of children (height-for-age z-scores, HAZ) according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards (’flagged HAZ’) at (g) 5 × 5 km grid-cell level; (h) district level (admin-2); (i) country level. Countries in dark grey are not in the sample. Grid cells with fewer than 10 people per 1 × 1 km and classified as barren or sparsely vegetated or grid cells with population data not available are colored light grey
Our new preprint investigates geostatistical, machine learning and hybrid approaches for mapping vaccination coverage and other health and development indicators. You can check it out via the link: brnw.ch/21wPF6w.
#VaxPop
#WorldPop
Chigozie Edson Utazi retweeted
Compared 7 methods to create high-resolution maps of vaccination coverage in Nigeria:
📊Geostatistical methods = best accuracy
💻machine learning (ML) approaches = lower reliability
⚠️Method choice impacts underserved population targeting
@Chigedson
brnw.ch/21wPF6w
Delighted to share our latest publication in @Vaccines_MDPI highlighting the importance of geospatial analyses following vaccination campaigns to estimate zero-dose prevalence at granular levels and inform follow-up RI strategies. (1/2) mdpi.com/2076-393X/12/12/129…
Both vaccine delivery strategies should be utilized effectively and in an integrated manner to achieve effective disease control. (2/2) #VaxPop @WorldPopProject @NphcdaNG @NBS_Nigeria @AndyTatem @dgwinfred
There are 4 fully-funded PhD scholarships available for Black/Black-mixed UK-based students in Geography and Environmental Science and other disciplines @unisouthampton. Deadline to apply is 22 Dec. 2024. Start date: Jan 2025.
Research topic can be student's own or that of the supervisor. More info here southampton.ac.uk/doctoral-c…. Please get in touch to discuss supervision and research topic if interested.
New preprint exploring the distribution of MCV zero-dose children before and after a vaccination campaign at the ward, health facility and district levels in Nigeria
Geospatial Variation in Vaccination Coverage and Zero-Dose Prevalence ... @Preprints_org preprints.org/manuscript/202…
I will be giving an invited talk on geostatistical and machine learning approaches for mapping health indicators at the ongoing #RSS2024Conf tomorrow (04/09). Please come along if you are at the conference. Schedule here -> app.oxfordabstracts.com/even…
Chigozie Edson Utazi retweeted
At #Geopalooza 4.0 organised by @gatesfoundation @WorldPopProject is well-represented. For more information about possible collaboration on our many open gespatial datasets and methods for your applications, please get in contact with us.
#population #health #samplingframe – at Nairobi, Kenya
Chigozie Edson Utazi retweeted
🚨 Learn more about the global impact of our open population data projects and activities with our interactive map 🌍
#geospatial #Population #OpenData
worldpop.org/global-engageme…
ALT WorldPop global engagement map https://www.worldpop.org/global-engagement/