Research: 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 using multi-source non-traditional data such as very-high spatial resolution satellite imagery (<1m) and open street map data. 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. 

Current research projects as principal or co-investigator: (1) Improving prediction of trends in prevalence of child wasting at country level: Exploring the impact of survey timing; (2) Mapping gender related barriers for immunisation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS); (3) Developing a childrens climate risk index with UNICEF. 

PhD Opportunities: Places for September 2025 have now closed. Places for 2026 will be advertised later in 2025. 

PhDs Completed:

1. Sam Harrison:  biodiversity and the socioeconomic links to agroforestry in the tropics 
2. Peter Hargreaves: Using Earth observations to research human wellbeing in rural spaces

Past/Completed Projects:

• Sustainable Census-Independent Population Estimation
• Development of the Childrens Climate Risk Index 
• Child poverty and access to services a Data For Children Collaborative with UNICEF Project 
• Population Density Estimations using Building Footprint Identification a Data For Children Collaborative with UNICEF Project
• STRATA: a collaboration between University of Edinburgh, UNEP and Earth Blox to develop a Climate Risk Index.

Teaching: Gary is the programme director for the Earth Observation and Geoinformation Management MSc.

He is course organiser for 'Visual Analytics' and teaches on the following postgraduate courses in 'EO4SDGs', ‘Applied research skills in environment and society’,  ‘Research practice and project planning’, ‘Passive Remote Sensing’ and undergraduate course on 'Sustainable Development Goals: History, Progress and Beyond 2030'. 

Deputy Director for SENSE Centre for Doctoral Training 

Co-chair of the Inclusive Wealth Working Group of the ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing)

Steering Committee member for Belgian Science Policy funded project 

Member of the UNICEF Climate and Environment Data Advisory Group

External Expert: World Health Organisation - selecting indicators to monitor the impact of extreme heat on Maternal, Newborn, Child Health 

• Affiliate of the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
• International Livestock Research Institute
• Member of the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF
• UNICEF
• Lupane State University and Bulawayo Municipal Government, Zimbabwe. 
• Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems
• Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity, Aarhus University, Denmark  - USES project
• International Institute of Applied Systems Science, Austria - Using Remote Sensing for monitoring and evaluating international development projects
• Southampton University
• University of Florida/Columbia University, USA - USES project (analysing Millennium Villages Data)

B.Sc. Lancaster University, Geography

M.Sc. Southampton University, Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis

Ph.D Southampton University, Exploring the spatial associations between socioeconomic variables and remotely sensed environmental metrics in Assam, Northeast India.

FHEA: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

personal teaching and research webpage: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/gwatmoug/