Research Overview

Professor Peter M. Atkinson isDistinguished Professorof Spatial Data Science at Lancaster University, and an interdisciplinary scientist.

He was previously Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at Lancaster University, a role he held for 10 years from 2015-2025. He was also simultaneously Executive Dean interim of the Faculty of Health and Medicine at Lancaster from 2018-2019. Before that, Peter was Head of the School of Geographyat the University of Southampton (2007-12).

Peter is currently Visiting Academic at Cardiff University and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bristol and Southampton, UK and Visiting Distinguished Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Peter was previously holder of the Belle van Zuylen Chair at Utrecht University (2015-16), and Visiting Fellow at Green-Templeton College, Oxford University (2012-14).

Peter is Editor-in-Chief of Science of Remote Sensing and Associate Editor of Environmetrics and sits on the editorial boards of many leading international journals.

Peter was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2019. Peter has received various awards for his research, including the Cuthbert Peek Award of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) in 2024, and the Peter Burrough Medal of the International Spatial Accuracy Research Association (ISARA) in 2016. He was elected the International Association of Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG) Distinguished Lecturer for the year 2020.

Research Overview

Peter's interdisciplinary research involves the development and application of measurement and modelling techniques such as in

• Earth observation (EO),
• geostatistics and Gaussian processes (with a deep interest in the change-of-support-problem, CoSP and downscaling),
• machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)
• dynamic numerical modelling

to increase our understanding in relation to a wide range of questions in science. These interdisciplinary science questions relate mainly to monitoring planetary changes and systems, including understanding of:

• Global vegetation and land cover changes due to climate and anthropogenic drivers
• Global disease transmission systems, especially for vector-borne diseases that are ecologically controlled
• Earth surface natural hazard impacts and risks

Peter has published over 450 peer-reviewed international scientific journal articles on these topics, and authored or edited nine books.

Peter's H-index=100 in Google Scholar and H-index=74 in Thompson ISI Web of Knowledge. Peter was listed as an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2023 and 2024.

Peter has chaired or co-chaired several major international conferences including Spatial Statistics in 2025, Spatial Statistics in 2017, RSPSoc in 2015, GeoENV in 2008 and GeoComputation in 2003. He has led multiple large grants and supervised around 72 PhD students, so far.

PhD Supervision

Peter is keen to supervise exceptional PhD students with a strong data science, mathematical, statistical or computer science background, who have an interest in these research topics. If you are interested in applying for a PhD in any of these topics please contact Peter at pma@lancaster.ac.uk.