Impact case study database

The development and implementation of methods for population mapping in the absence of adequate census data has resulted in a range of impacts:

-Service delivery and public health planning in Afghanistan: Collaboration with UNFPA and the government of Afghanistan in 2015-17 produced new spatially detailed population estimates. These were presented by Tatem in Kabul to President Ghani, his cabinet, heads of UN agencies and multiple diplomats and ambassadors in late 2017. WorldPop’s estimates have since been adopted by the UN and many other international organizations in the country and are undergoing cabinet approval to become the new official government population statistics, replacing projections from the last census in 1979 [ 5.1]. The estimates have since been used continuously in planning and implementing polio vaccination in the country by the government and the WHO’s polio eradication initiative, as well as by the government and World Bank in designing new household surveys [ 5.1]. In both cases the modelled estimates have replaced 1979 projections to produce more reliable, precise and efficient approaches.

- Public health and education planning by Nigeria’s government: Similar population modelling in Nigeria has been used to plan polio elimination efforts since 2014, after the 2006 census data proved to be too inaccurate. The switch to the modelled estimates for assessment of needs, planning vaccination strategies and operational implementation contributed to successful delivery of vaccination and the elimination of polio in the country in 2015. Evidence from post-campaign coverage surveys showed that where the modelled estimates were used to plan vaccination in northern Nigeria, no areas were found to have unvaccinated children, compared to the south where children in at least ten of the sampled settlements were found to have been missed [ 5.2]. As the Nigerian National Primary Health Care Development Agency notes [ 5.2] “Outbreaks fell to zero and have stayed there. These innovations did more than help eradicate polio in northern Nigeria”. The data are currently used in the national vaccination tracking system [ 5.3], have fed into the National Surgical, Obstetrics, Anaesthesia & Nursing Plan (NSOANP) for Nigeria, and are used by the Ministry of Education (UBEC) to assess school coverage [ 5.4].

-Uptake by UNFPA and for service delivery in Colombia: The Afghanistan and Nigeria work resulted in WorldPop’s modelling approaches being adopted in the UNFPA census strategy in July 2019 [ 5.5], and the establishment of a new $40M programme, GRID3, where the WorldPop group are funded to support governments in sub-Saharan Africa with modelling and capacity strengthening. As of December 2020, this involves active support to 10 governments, covering 55% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa [ 5.6]. Moreover, through partnerships established with UNFPA, additional modelling efforts continue in collaboration with national governments. This includes the government of Colombia, where the national statistics office, DANE, was unable to complete full enumeration in their 2018 census [ 5.1], depriving many regions of the accurate data required for effective governance and resource allocation. The WorldPop group worked with DANE to develop modelling methods to impute population estimates for unenumerated areas. These were released as national statistics in 2019 [ 5.7] . In Colombia and elsewhere, the data saw “ widespread usage within governments for …health system planning, school placement and census planning” [ 5.1; Dr. Juran, UNFPA].

Following production of the high resolution gridded population datasets produced through disaggregation of administrative unit-based census or official estimates, these were made open access through the WorldPop website, and a range of collaborations and uses followed:

- Disaster relief by UNITAR, FAO and via UN humanitarian data hub: From November 2013 to present, WorldPop’s maps have consistently formed the standard dataset for the Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) of the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) for assessment of populations impacted by disasters and other events (e.g. the 13.5 million people affected by Cyclone IRMA-17 [ 5.8]), where no other detailed population data exist. They provide the numbers used by response and aid agencies to assess needs and scope budgets. The data also form the core population input to the FAO’s geospatial platform [ 5.8], used to plan food security and agricultural operations. From 2017, collaboration with the UN's Humanitarian Data Exchange enabled population total estimates to be produced globally for UN-recognised boundaries. In 2020, the datasets were downloaded 11,883 times by 4,779 individual users to support humanitarian operations such as aid and healthcare delivery, with 155,000 further downloads via the WorldPop web site [ 5.9].

-Training via UNFPA: In April 2016, the population mapping work was presented by Tatem to heads and representatives of all national statistical offices of the world as the keynote talk at the UN’s Commission on Population and Development [ 5.10]. WorldPop delivered training on data use at UNFPA headquarters in New York, via multiple UN regional workshops for heads of statistical offices, and multiple country capacity strengthening sessions, with cohorts of university staff within GRID3 focus countries trained to deliver future training to governments. This has included co-leading with UNFPA sessions on population modelling for over 50 representatives from the UN and governments in the Arab States region in 2018 and a similar number for the West and Central Africa region in 2019. In 2020, more than 500 government, local university and UN staff attended training run through GRID3. Dr. Juran of UNFPA notes ‘the collaborations with WorldPop have helped UNFPA build important new areas to fulfil one of its key missions in supporting population and housing censuses in all low- and middle-income countries’ [ 5.1].

- International health metrics: The datasets are widely used in the health metrics field, forming the denominator used for many African countries in the World Malaria Reports by WHO in 2016-2019 [ 5.11], the ongoing Local Burden of Disease work [ 5.12] and from 2014, UNFPA's State of the World's Midwifery series [ 5.13]. Such metrics are used to set international funding allocations, strategic priorities and for global advocacy, and reliable and consistent denominators at subnational scales are vital for their production.

-Pandemic response: WorldPop datasets have been widely used in COVID-19 pandemic response. This has included use as the demographic basis for the highly publicised Imperial College and IHME COVID transmission models [ 5.14], which led to the implementation of lockdown measures by the UK and US governments in March 2020. Moreover the datasets form the demographic basis of UNFPA’s COVID-19 Vulnerability platform and UN-OCHA’s COVID-19 Map Explorer [ 5.15]. Via Grid3, WorldPop datasets have been used by at least three African governments in their response efforts [ 5.16].

The research’s impact was recognised in 2020 through the Royal Geographical Society’s Back Award to Prof Tatem “ for leading the development of geospatial and demographic data to assist the work of public policy around the globe”. One award is made annually for geographical studies making an outstanding contribution to national or international public policy [ 5.17].