Professor Nik Lomax

Research interests

Nik is developing innovative methods for estimating and projecting people, households and their demographic characteristics. He is addressing new ways to integrate information on human behaviour which are lacking from current demographic models and will focus on the dynamic transitions which occur in everyday life, for example decisions to move or stay in a location, form new households, or have children. His research will also assess the impact of external forces on these decisions, from the local (e.g. housing conditions) to the global (e.g. economic outlook), thus producing new scenarios which can be used in a wide range of applied settings.

Core projects will be developed using dynamic microsimulation techniques and wider cross-discipline methodological advances will be developed, such as the use of machine learning to train simulation parameters, the integration of Big Datasets containing information on human behaviour and extension to agent-based approaches for scenario simulation and dynamic modelling. The communication and visualisation of results, including the quantification of uncertainty in scenarios, is integral to achieving impact from the work.