A Visual Analytics Approach to Understanding Poverty Assessment through Disaster Impacts in Latin America and Africa. Progress Report 15 October 2011.
Abstract
This progress report presents an update regarding the activities conducted by UNOOSA and partners agencies in the project entitled: A Visual Analytics Approach to Understanding Poverty Assessment through Disaster Impacts in Latin America and Africa. The report comments on activities conducted thus far, results from ongoing analysis, challenges faced, and the next steps.
The report presents a description of the visual analytics tool developed to conduct the analysis of data collected for this project and the analysis regarding the Guatemalan case study. The report also includes one annex which lists the different types of data and information which have been gathered to carry out the analysis focusing on Guatemala.
Preliminary findings indicate that assessing the impact of the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) in countries like Guatemala requires a more in-depth analysis of pre-existing conditions, of the impacts of International Oil and Food Crisis which preceded the GEC, and regarding local conditions including those faced by the government at the time of the GEC. The project focused on the analysis of impacts of disasters to track the effects of the GEC, but the impacts related to disasters reveal the vulnerabilities which have been generated over the years or decades, and the effects of the GEC on vulnerability is often blurred by other factors including the effects of the preceding International Oil and Food Crisis, previous disasters, the pre-existing conditions regarding poverty and livelihoods. While visual analytic tools such as the Visual Analytic Globe were developed to assist researchers involved in this project in the analysis of the GEC and its effects on Guatemala and Burkina Faso, such tools did not provide an advantage in comparison to the more traditional research methods when tracking the effects of the GEC.
Citation
Anon. A Visual Analytics Approach to Understanding Poverty Assessment through Disaster Impacts in Latin America and Africa. Progress Report 15 October 2011. United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Vienna, Austria (2011) 92 pp.
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