Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Poverty, health and satellite-derived vegetation indices
T2 - their inter-spatial relationship in West Africa
AU - Sedda, Luigi
AU - Tatem, Andrew J.
AU - Morley, David W.
AU - Atkinson, Peter M.
AU - Wardrop, Nicola A.
AU - Pezzulo, Carla
AU - Sorichetta, Alessandro
AU - Kuleszo, Joanna
AU - Rogerse, David J.
PY - 2015/3
Y1 - 2015/3
N2 - Background: Previous analyses have shown the individual correlations between poverty, health and satellite-derived vegetation indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). However, generally these analyses did not explore the statistical interconnections between poverty, health outcomes and NDVI.Methods: In this research aspatial methods (principal component analysis) and spatial models (variography, factorial kriging and cokriging) were applied to investigate the correlations and spatial relationships between intensity of poverty, health (expressed as child mortality and undernutrition), and NDVI for a large area of West Africa.Results: This research showed that the intensity of poverty (and hence child mortality and nutrition) varies inversely with NDVI. From the spatial point-of-view, similarities in the spatial variation of intensity of poverty and NDVI were found.Conclusions: These results highlight the utility of satellite-based metrics for poverty models including health and ecological components and, in general for large scale analysis, estimation and optimisation of multidimensional poverty metrics. However, it also stresses the need for further studies on the causes of the association between NDVI, health and poverty. Once these relationships are confirmed and better understood, the presence of this ecological component in poverty metrics has the potential to facilitate the analysis of the impacts of climate change on the rural populations afflicted by poverty and child mortality.
AB - Background: Previous analyses have shown the individual correlations between poverty, health and satellite-derived vegetation indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). However, generally these analyses did not explore the statistical interconnections between poverty, health outcomes and NDVI.Methods: In this research aspatial methods (principal component analysis) and spatial models (variography, factorial kriging and cokriging) were applied to investigate the correlations and spatial relationships between intensity of poverty, health (expressed as child mortality and undernutrition), and NDVI for a large area of West Africa.Results: This research showed that the intensity of poverty (and hence child mortality and nutrition) varies inversely with NDVI. From the spatial point-of-view, similarities in the spatial variation of intensity of poverty and NDVI were found.Conclusions: These results highlight the utility of satellite-based metrics for poverty models including health and ecological components and, in general for large scale analysis, estimation and optimisation of multidimensional poverty metrics. However, it also stresses the need for further studies on the causes of the association between NDVI, health and poverty. Once these relationships are confirmed and better understood, the presence of this ecological component in poverty metrics has the potential to facilitate the analysis of the impacts of climate change on the rural populations afflicted by poverty and child mortality.
KW - Child mortality
KW - Geostatistics
KW - Multidimensional Poverty Index
KW - Normalized difference vegetation index
KW - Nutrition
KW - Poverty
KW - WATER MANAGEMENT
KW - COUNTRIES
KW - LEVEL
KW - MODEL
KW - RISK
U2 - 10.1093/inthealth/ihv005
DO - 10.1093/inthealth/ihv005
M3 - Journal article
VL - 7
SP - 99
EP - 106
JO - International Health
JF - International Health
SN - 1876-3413
IS - 2
ER -