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Douglas Leasure

PhD
Senior Researcher and Data Scientist

Doug's research spans demography, population ecology, Bayesian statistics, and GIS/remote sensing. He specialises in developing novel methods to map population sizes and demographics with high spatial resolution in data-sparse settings by supplementing traditional survey data with innovative new data sources including social media activity and space-based Earth observations. His work developing bespoke hierarchical Bayesian modelling approaches aims to account for uncertainty in demographic estimation processes to support informed decision-making for crisis response, census support, government services, and global health initiatives. To promote research with real-world impacts, Doug is committed to open science and enjoys developing web applications that translate scientific results into easy-to-navigate interactive maps and tools to facilitate uptake by stakeholders globally.

Before joining LCDS at the University of Oxford, Doug led the Spatial Statistical Population Modelling team in the WorldPop Research Group at the University of Southampton developing Bayesian statistical models and applying machine learning approaches to produce high resolution population estimates supporting initiatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund. He was previously a post-doctoral research associate at the River Basin Center in the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia developing statistical models for NASA's Ecological Forecasting program. He completed a PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas where he held a Doctoral Academy Fellowship and was a post-doctoral research associate for the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey.

Publications

Thursday, 18 May 2023
Anastasiadou, A., Volgin, A. and Leasure, D. (2023) “War and Migration: Quantifying the Russian exodus through Yandex search trends”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 06 April 2023
Leasure, D., Kashyap, R., Rampazzo, F., Dooley, C., Elbers, B., Bondarenko, M., Verhagen, M., Frey, A., Yan, J., Akimova, E., Fatehkia, M., Trigwell, R., Tatem, A., Weber, I. and Mills, M. (2023) “Nowcasting daily population displacement in Ukraine through social media advertising data”, Population and Development Review, 49(2), pp. 231–254.
Douglas Leasure
Friday, 31 March 2023
Kashyap, R., Rinderknecht, R., Akbaritabar, A., Alburez-Gutierrez, D., Gil-Clavel, S., Grow, A., Kim, J., Leasure, D., Lohmann, S., Negraia, D., Perrotta, D., Rampazzo, F., Tsai, C.-J., Verhagen, M., Zagheni, E. and Zhao, X. (2023) “Digital and computational demography”, in Skopek, J. (ed.) Research Handbook on Digital Sociology. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 48–86.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 March 2023
Sanchez-Cespedes, L., Leasure, D., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Amaya Cruz, G., Garcia Velez, G., Mendoza, A., Marín Salazar, Y., Esch, T., Tatem, A. and Ospina Bohórquez, M. (2023) “Social cartography and satellite-derived building coverage for post-census population estimates in difficult-to-access regions of Colombia.”, Population studies, pp. 1–18.
Douglas Leasure
Sunday, 16 October 2022
Rampazzo, F., Raybould, A., Rampazzo, P., barker, R. and Leasure, D. (2022) “‘UPDATE: I’m pregnant!’: Inferring Global Use of Fertility Tracking Apps”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 22 August 2022
Hemstrom, W., Dauwalter, D., Peacock, M., Leasure, D., Wenger, S., Miller, M. and Neville, . (2022) “Population genomic monitoring provides insight into conservation status but no correlation with demographic estimates of extinction risk in a threatened trout”, Evolutionary Applications, 15(9), pp. 1449–1468.
Douglas Leasure
Saturday, 23 July 2022
Sanchez-Cespedes, L., Leasure, D., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Cruz, G., Velez, G., Mendoza, A., Salazar, Y., Esch, T., Tatem, A. and Bohórquez, M. (2022) “Social cartography and satellite-derived building coverage for post-census population estimates in difficult-to-access regions of Colombia”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 21 July 2022
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2022) “How accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained gridded population data at the cell-level?: A simulation analysis in urban Namibia”, PLoS ONE, 17(7).
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
Leasure, D., Kashyap, R., Rampazzo, F., Dooley, C., Elbers, B., Bondarenko, M., Verhagen, M., Frey, A., Yan, J., Akimova, E., Fatehkia, M., Trigwell, R., Tatem, A., Weber, I. and Mills, M. (2022) “Nowcasting daily population displacement in Ukraine through social media advertising data”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 21 April 2022
Kashyap, R., Rinderknecht, R., Akbaritabar, A., Alburez-Gutierrez, D., Gil-Clavel, S., Grow, A., Kim, J., Leasure, D., Lohmann, S., Negraia, D., Perrotta, D., Rampazzo, F., Tsai, C.-J., Verhagen, M., Zagheni, E. and Zhao, X. (2022) “Digital and Computational Demography”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Friday, 01 April 2022
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2022) “How Accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained Gridded Population Data at the Cell-Level?: A Simulation Analysis in Urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 14 March 2022
Boo, G., Darin, E., Leasure, D., Dooley, C., Chamberlain, H., Lázár, A., Tschirhart, K., Sinai, C., Hoff, N., Fuller, T., Musene, K., Batumbo, A., Rimoin, A. and Tatem, A. (2022) “High-resolution population estimation using household survey data and building footprints”, Nature Communications, 13.
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 14 September 2021
Nilsen, K., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Leasure, D., Utazi, C., Ruktanonchai, C., Wigley, A., Dooley, C., Matthews, Z. and Tatem, A. (2021) “A review of geospatial methods for population estimation and their use in constructing reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health service indicators”, BMC Health Services Research, 21(S1).
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 01 June 2021
Jochem, W., Leasure, D., Pannell, O., Chamberlain, H., Jones, P. and Tatem, A. (2021) “Classifying settlement types from multi-scale spatial patterns of building footprints”, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48(5), pp. 1161–1179.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 17 May 2021
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2021) “How accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained gridded population data at the cell-level?: A simulation analysis in urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 22 February 2021
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2021) “How Accurate are WorldPop-Global Gridded Population Data at the Cell-Level?: A Simulation Analysis in Urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 01 September 2020
Leasure, D., Jochem, W., Weber, E., Seaman, V. and Tatem, A. (2020) “National population mapping from sparse survey data: A hierarchical Bayesian modeling framework to account for uncertainty.”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(39), pp. 24173–24179.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 April 2020
Neville, H., Leasure, D., Dauwalter, D., Dunham, J., Bjork, R., Fesenmyer, K., Chelgren, N., Peacock, M., Luce, C., Isaak, D., Carranza, L., Sjoberg, J. and Wenger, S. (2020) “Application of multiple-population viability analysis to evaluate species recovery alternatives.”, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 34(2), pp. 482–493.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 January 2020
Lloyd, C., Sturrock, H., Leasure, D., Jochem, W., Lazar, A. and Tatem, A. (2020) “Using GIS and Machine Learning to Classify Residential Status of Urban Buildings in Low and Middle Income Settings”, REMOTE SENSING, 12(23).
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 01 July 2019
Lynch, D., Leasure, D. and Magoulick, D. (2019) “Flow alteration-ecology relationships in Ozark Highland streams: Consequences for fish, crayfish and macroinvertebrate assemblages.”, The Science of the total environment, 672, pp. 680–697.
Douglas Leasure
  • Load More
This is the alt text
Email
douglas.leasure@demography.ox.ac.uk
Links
Google Scholar

Recent

news
26 Oct 2023

Mapineq Link unveils phase 2 of database

news
6 Jul 2023

Mapping Inequalities: Empowering research through Mapineq Link

news
21 Jun 2023

New Digital Gender Gaps website

Douglas Leasure

PhD
Senior Researcher and Data Scientist
This is the alt text
Email
douglas.leasure@demography.ox.ac.uk
Links
Google Scholar

Doug's research spans demography, population ecology, Bayesian statistics, and GIS/remote sensing. He specialises in developing novel methods to map population sizes and demographics with high spatial resolution in data-sparse settings by supplementing traditional survey data with innovative new data sources including social media activity and space-based Earth observations. His work developing bespoke hierarchical Bayesian modelling approaches aims to account for uncertainty in demographic estimation processes to support informed decision-making for crisis response, census support, government services, and global health initiatives. To promote research with real-world impacts, Doug is committed to open science and enjoys developing web applications that translate scientific results into easy-to-navigate interactive maps and tools to facilitate uptake by stakeholders globally.

Before joining LCDS at the University of Oxford, Doug led the Spatial Statistical Population Modelling team in the WorldPop Research Group at the University of Southampton developing Bayesian statistical models and applying machine learning approaches to produce high resolution population estimates supporting initiatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund. He was previously a post-doctoral research associate at the River Basin Center in the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia developing statistical models for NASA's Ecological Forecasting program. He completed a PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas where he held a Doctoral Academy Fellowship and was a post-doctoral research associate for the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey.

Publications

Thursday, 18 May 2023
Anastasiadou, A., Volgin, A. and Leasure, D. (2023) “War and Migration: Quantifying the Russian exodus through Yandex search trends”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 06 April 2023
Leasure, D., Kashyap, R., Rampazzo, F., Dooley, C., Elbers, B., Bondarenko, M., Verhagen, M., Frey, A., Yan, J., Akimova, E., Fatehkia, M., Trigwell, R., Tatem, A., Weber, I. and Mills, M. (2023) “Nowcasting daily population displacement in Ukraine through social media advertising data”, Population and Development Review, 49(2), pp. 231–254.
Douglas Leasure
Friday, 31 March 2023
Kashyap, R., Rinderknecht, R., Akbaritabar, A., Alburez-Gutierrez, D., Gil-Clavel, S., Grow, A., Kim, J., Leasure, D., Lohmann, S., Negraia, D., Perrotta, D., Rampazzo, F., Tsai, C.-J., Verhagen, M., Zagheni, E. and Zhao, X. (2023) “Digital and computational demography”, in Skopek, J. (ed.) Research Handbook on Digital Sociology. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 48–86.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 March 2023
Sanchez-Cespedes, L., Leasure, D., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Amaya Cruz, G., Garcia Velez, G., Mendoza, A., Marín Salazar, Y., Esch, T., Tatem, A. and Ospina Bohórquez, M. (2023) “Social cartography and satellite-derived building coverage for post-census population estimates in difficult-to-access regions of Colombia.”, Population studies, pp. 1–18.
Douglas Leasure
Sunday, 16 October 2022
Rampazzo, F., Raybould, A., Rampazzo, P., barker, R. and Leasure, D. (2022) “‘UPDATE: I’m pregnant!’: Inferring Global Use of Fertility Tracking Apps”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 22 August 2022
Hemstrom, W., Dauwalter, D., Peacock, M., Leasure, D., Wenger, S., Miller, M. and Neville, . (2022) “Population genomic monitoring provides insight into conservation status but no correlation with demographic estimates of extinction risk in a threatened trout”, Evolutionary Applications, 15(9), pp. 1449–1468.
Douglas Leasure
Saturday, 23 July 2022
Sanchez-Cespedes, L., Leasure, D., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Cruz, G., Velez, G., Mendoza, A., Salazar, Y., Esch, T., Tatem, A. and Bohórquez, M. (2022) “Social cartography and satellite-derived building coverage for post-census population estimates in difficult-to-access regions of Colombia”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 21 July 2022
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2022) “How accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained gridded population data at the cell-level?: A simulation analysis in urban Namibia”, PLoS ONE, 17(7).
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
Leasure, D., Kashyap, R., Rampazzo, F., Dooley, C., Elbers, B., Bondarenko, M., Verhagen, M., Frey, A., Yan, J., Akimova, E., Fatehkia, M., Trigwell, R., Tatem, A., Weber, I. and Mills, M. (2022) “Nowcasting daily population displacement in Ukraine through social media advertising data”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Thursday, 21 April 2022
Kashyap, R., Rinderknecht, R., Akbaritabar, A., Alburez-Gutierrez, D., Gil-Clavel, S., Grow, A., Kim, J., Leasure, D., Lohmann, S., Negraia, D., Perrotta, D., Rampazzo, F., Tsai, C.-J., Verhagen, M., Zagheni, E. and Zhao, X. (2022) “Digital and Computational Demography”, Center for Open Science.
Douglas Leasure
Friday, 01 April 2022
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2022) “How Accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained Gridded Population Data at the Cell-Level?: A Simulation Analysis in Urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 14 March 2022
Boo, G., Darin, E., Leasure, D., Dooley, C., Chamberlain, H., Lázár, A., Tschirhart, K., Sinai, C., Hoff, N., Fuller, T., Musene, K., Batumbo, A., Rimoin, A. and Tatem, A. (2022) “High-resolution population estimation using household survey data and building footprints”, Nature Communications, 13.
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 14 September 2021
Nilsen, K., Tejedor-Garavito, N., Leasure, D., Utazi, C., Ruktanonchai, C., Wigley, A., Dooley, C., Matthews, Z. and Tatem, A. (2021) “A review of geospatial methods for population estimation and their use in constructing reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health service indicators”, BMC Health Services Research, 21(S1).
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 01 June 2021
Jochem, W., Leasure, D., Pannell, O., Chamberlain, H., Jones, P. and Tatem, A. (2021) “Classifying settlement types from multi-scale spatial patterns of building footprints”, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48(5), pp. 1161–1179.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 17 May 2021
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2021) “How accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained gridded population data at the cell-level?: A simulation analysis in urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 22 February 2021
Thomson, D., Leasure, D., Bird, T., Tzavidis, N. and Tatem, A. (2021) “How Accurate are WorldPop-Global Gridded Population Data at the Cell-Level?: A Simulation Analysis in Urban Namibia”, MDPI AG.
Douglas Leasure
Tuesday, 01 September 2020
Leasure, D., Jochem, W., Weber, E., Seaman, V. and Tatem, A. (2020) “National population mapping from sparse survey data: A hierarchical Bayesian modeling framework to account for uncertainty.”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(39), pp. 24173–24179.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 April 2020
Neville, H., Leasure, D., Dauwalter, D., Dunham, J., Bjork, R., Fesenmyer, K., Chelgren, N., Peacock, M., Luce, C., Isaak, D., Carranza, L., Sjoberg, J. and Wenger, S. (2020) “Application of multiple-population viability analysis to evaluate species recovery alternatives.”, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 34(2), pp. 482–493.
Douglas Leasure
Wednesday, 01 January 2020
Lloyd, C., Sturrock, H., Leasure, D., Jochem, W., Lazar, A. and Tatem, A. (2020) “Using GIS and Machine Learning to Classify Residential Status of Urban Buildings in Low and Middle Income Settings”, REMOTE SENSING, 12(23).
Douglas Leasure
Monday, 01 July 2019
Lynch, D., Leasure, D. and Magoulick, D. (2019) “Flow alteration-ecology relationships in Ozark Highland streams: Consequences for fish, crayfish and macroinvertebrate assemblages.”, The Science of the total environment, 672, pp. 680–697.
Douglas Leasure
  • Load More

Recent

news
26 Oct 2023

Mapineq Link unveils phase 2 of database

news
6 Jul 2023

Mapping Inequalities: Empowering research through Mapineq Link

news
21 Jun 2023

New Digital Gender Gaps website

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