Fiona M Underwood

Statistical consultancy & research

Statistical thoughts from working on projects in natural resources management, food security, climate change, international development and the illegal wildlife trade

Does an increase in the number of seizures of illegal goods tell us whether illicit trade is increasing or decreasing?

What can we learn about trends in trade of an illicit good from looking at how the number of seizures of an illegal good changes over time? Let us suppose we have the following information. Suppose the law enforcement agencies within a country report seizing 50 shipments of illegal goods* in time period A, 75 […]

Dissecting the illegal ivory trade: an analysis of ivory seizures data – video summary

I have just uploaded three videos that describe how to use data from ivory seizures records to learn about trends in the illegal ivory trade. The videos describe some of the issues and biases with these data, the methodology used – in non statistical language – and the results. These summarise our PLoS One paper […]