Geographic information analysis and web-based geoportals to explore malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of approaches

BMC Public Health

Bernhard Höfle³  Rainer Sauerborn³  Jörn Profe⁴  Clara B Aranda-Jan¹  Revati Phalkey²  Sabrina Marx⁴ 

[1] Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK;Institute of Public Health, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 324, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany;Heidelberg Center for the Environment, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany;Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Berliner Str. 48, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

关键词: Sub-Saharan Africa;    Malnutrition;    Web services;    Spatial analysis;    Geographic Information System (GIS);   

Others  :  1122932
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-14-1189

 received in 2014-05-02, accepted in 2014-11-06,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Childhood malnutrition is a serious challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and a major underlying cause of death. It is the result of a dynamic and complex interaction between political, social, economic, environmental and other factors. As spatially oriented research has been established in health sciences in recent years, developments in Geographic Information Science (GIScience) provide beneficial tools to get an improved understanding of malnutrition.

Methods

In order to assess the current state of knowledge regarding the use of geoinformation analyses for exploring malnutrition in SSA, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed literature is conducted using Scopus, ISI Web of Science and PubMed. As a supplement to the review, we carry on to investigate the establishment of web-based geoportals for providing freely accessible malnutrition geodata to a broad community. Based on these findings, we identify current limitations and discuss how new developments in GIScience might help to overcome impending barriers.

Results

563 articles are identified from the searches, from which a total of nine articles and eight geoportals meet inclusion criteria. The review suggests that the spatial dimension of malnutrition is analyzed most often at the regional and national level using geostatistical analysis methods. Therefore, heterogeneous geographic information at different spatial scales and from multiple sources is combined by applying geoinformation analysis methods such as spatial interpolation, aggregation and downscaling techniques. Geocoded malnutrition data from the Demographic and Health Survey Program are the most common information source to quantify the prevalence of malnutrition on a local scale and are frequently combined with regional data on climate, population, agriculture and/or infrastructure. Only aggregated geoinformation about malnutrition prevalence is freely accessible, mostly displayed via web map visualizations or downloadable map images. The lack of detailed geographic data at household and local level is a major limitation for an in-depth assessment of malnutrition and links to potential impact factors.

Conclusions

We propose that the combination of malnutrition-related studies with most recent GIScience developments such as crowd-sourced geodata collection, (web-based) interoperable spatial health data infrastructures as well as (dynamic) information fusion approaches are beneficial to deepen the understanding of this complex phenomenon.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Marx et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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