Gary Watmough

Gary's main research focus is in the development of approaches for geographical targeting of scarce government and NGO resources across the planet but particularly in low and middle income countries. Gary’s research supports the UN’s call for a data revolution in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help monitoring progress and contribute to geographic targeting of scarce resources. The majority of projects Gary has worked on recently have been co-designed with UN agencies and they are directly dealing with gaps in knowledge and providing required outputs for practitioners as well as furthering scientific knowledge.Gary specialises in developing proxy metrics for measuring poverty, livelihoods and wellbeing using multi-source non-traditional data such as very-high spatial resolution satellite imagery (<1m) and openly available data products (open street map, Worldpop, Night time lights). Gary is particularly interested in developing methods for using satellite imagery to map and monitor aspects of human livelihoods and how this could be used to support the targeting of resources to areas that are in specific need. Gary is a associated member of the Jameel Observatory for Food Security/Sovereignty Early Action and the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF.