On the occasion of the Census of Population and Housing of the Maltese Islands the Geography Division at the Mediterranean Institute will be organising a seminar and lectures as part of its Geography Programme.

Seminar: Geography and the Census

Professor David Martin, University of Southampton
Dr Simon Mercieca, Director, Mediterranean Institute
Mr Michael Pace-Ross, Director General, National Statistics Office
on Tuesday 15 November, 1000hrs - 1200hrs
in the Common Room, Students’ House (near Canteen)

Professor David Martin from the University of Southampton will be the guest speaker during the lectures
The lecturing schedule will be as follows:

Principles and Context
Thursday, 17 November, 1000hrs - 1200hrs
in Old Humanities (OH) Room 112

Automated Zone Design
Friday, 18 November, 0900hrs - 1000hrs
M.A. Vassalli Conference Centre - Gateway (GW) Hall C

Geography and Employability
Friday, 18 November, 1100hrs - 1200hrs
Junior College - Conference Hall

Professor David Martin undertook a Ph.D. in Cardiff in the mid-1980s just as widespread interest was developing in geographical information systems (GIS). He was particularly intrigued by the problems of representing census and health data in GIS, which formed the focus of his thesis and a subsequent textbook GIS: Socioeconomic Applications.

He moved to the University of Southampton in 1992 where he is now a Professor of Geography in the School of Geography. In 2002 he was appointed Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) census programme and continued to work on many aspects of the spatial representation of population, particularly surface modelling, accessibility measurement and georeferencing methods. He developed the Automated Zone Design techniques which formed the basis for the 2001 census Output Area Geographies employed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These have since been developed both for use in the 2011 census outputs and to create the Super Output Area Geography used by the Neighbourhood Statistics Service. Professor Martin has most recently begun to work on the challenges of modelling the geographical distribution of daytime populations.

There is no registration fee but those intending to attend are to send an email to Maria V Attard.