RIVAF research: "A Visual Analytics Approach to Understanding Poverty Assessment through Disaster Impacts in Africa"
The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) working in partnership with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) will examine the effects of the global economic crisis on poverty and vulnerability as revealed through natural disasters impacts in Africa. The economic crisis has created a set of unique, previously unexamined circumstances that have negatively affected livelihoods, creating increased poverty conditions and subsequent increased vulnerability to natural disasters.
The team will use a variety of indicators such as household poverty figures, import/export figures of key African commodities (cotton, palm oil etc.), global remittances, changing land use/land cover patterns, and economic and social disaster impact data to understand the crisis' impacts on the poor and vulnerable. The research team will emphasize the development of visually-oriented analytical products such as combined geographic maps, timeline and data graphs in order to provide convincing analysis of the impacts of the crisis on the poor and/or vulnerable in order to support decision making processes within the broader context of Global Pulse.
http://www.un-spider.org/rivaf/