Populations are not static and vary across of range of geospatial and temporal scales. Research within the fields of Geographical Information Science (GISc), population and quantitative human geography using census, administrative, open source and big data has developed our understanding of human population dynamics. It has also gained increasing insights into ever changing sociodemographic characteristics. Small area and spatiotemporal population analysis, providing important data that underpin decisions on methodological development and application.
Societal as well as academic benefits include developing a better understanding for service planning and provision (e.g. healthcare and emergency services), understanding environmental and natural hazard risk exposure (e.g. flooding) and resource consumption.
Dr Alan Smith is an expert in GISc and currently works on UK, US and Australia census data applications and has current research interests including identifying emerging sources of spatiotemporal population data (e.g. social media and big data).
He is currently a committee member of the Royal Geographical Society’s GISc Research Group.
