Contents & Foreword, Characterizing And ... - IRRI books

Applications of geo-referenced biophysicaland socioeconomic data—levels of analysisGeo-information techniques provide a range of tools for creating, manipulating, andanalyzing geographically referenced data. These tools may be deployed at differentlevels of sophistication in application to socioeconomic studies.Description and exploration of spatial patterns in variables. The simplest applicationof GIS with socioeconomic information is to display the geographic distributionof these data. The task of collecting and processing data capturing the completespatial distribution of socioeconomic characteristics is cumbersome and costly,but once accomplished the display of the information on maps generated from a GISis uncomplicated and can be rewarding. Visualizing such information in a spatial andgraphical manner helps make clear the spatial pattern—if one exists—in observedcharacteristics. As an example, consider Figure 1. IRRI’s GIS facility generated thefigure from a GIS data set on rice production in northeast Thailand. It shows severalcharacteristics and spatial patterns of interest. The pie charts on the figure show therice production level (indicated by the size of the pies) by variety for 19 provinces. Itis evident that the main rice-producing provinces are in the south. Here, the predominantrice variety planted is KDML105, which is a commercial, premium-qualitynonglutinous fragrant rice. Rice in the northern provinces is not only less important interms of volume produced, but in this area it is used mainly for domestic consumption(as indicated by the relatively higher proportion of glutinous varieties). The figurealso shows that KDML105 yields in the southern provinces are the lowest amongprovinces in northeast Thailand. As suggested by this example, superimposing mapsof socioeconomic outcomes and biophysical conditions can suggest research hypothesesand foster understanding of the relation between the two types of characteristics.Generation of geo-referenced socioeconomic information—defining informationat a common scale. A ubiquitous problem in GIS research with socioeconomicdata relates to the scale and comprehensiveness in geographic area addressed in theresearch. In particular, socioeconomic research is often asked to characterize a largearea while data available are often limited to much smaller areas. Unfortunately, mostsocioeconomic studies cover narrow geographic areas because of the difficulty ofcarrying out detailed socioeconomic surveys over large areas as the result of financialand logistical constraints. Recent advances in modern, satellite-based remote-sensingand global-positioning system (GPS) technology promise to partly alleviate shortcomingsin the availability of geo-referenced data. Land use and land cover, distributionof human settlements, and location of infrastructure (roads, public facilities, electricity,irrigation canals) are examples of the types of socioeconomic information thatare discernible using remote-sensing data. GPS technology is useful for geo-positioningsurvey points, such as village and farm locations, and even in tracing field boundaries.The second problem in integrated GIS and socioeconomic research is that therequired data are often not available at the proper level of resolution. Commonly,aggregate data are available whereas more detailed information for small areas orindividual economic agents is required. Furthermore, data obtained from different444 Edmonds and Kam