Marx Sabrina, Phalkey Revati, Aranda-Jan Clara B, Profe Jörn, Sauerborn Rainer, Höfle Bernhard
Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Berliner Str, 48, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
BMC Public Health. 2014 Nov 20;14:1189. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-14-1189.
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.
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.
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.
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.
儿童营养不良是撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）面临的一项严峻挑战，也是主要的潜在死亡原因。它是政治、社会、经济、环境及其他因素之间动态复杂相互作用的结果。近年来，随着健康科学领域开展了以空间为导向的研究，地理信息科学（GIScience）的发展为更好地理解营养不良提供了有益工具。
为评估利用地理信息分析探索SSA地区营养不良状况的现有知识水平，我们使用Scopus、ISI科学网和PubMed对同行评审文献进行了系统的文献综述。作为该综述的补充，我们继续调查基于网络的地理门户的建立情况，以便为广大社区提供可免费获取的营养不良地理数据。基于这些发现，我们确定了当前的局限性，并讨论GIScience的新发展如何有助于克服即将面临的障碍。
通过检索共识别出563篇文章，其中共有9篇文章和8个地理门户符合纳入标准。该综述表明，营养不良的空间维度大多在区域和国家层面使用地理统计分析方法进行分析。因此，通过应用空间插值、聚合和降尺度技术等地理信息分析方法，将不同空间尺度和多个来源的异质地理信息进行整合。来自人口与健康调查项目的地理编码营养不良数据是在地方层面量化营养不良患病率最常用的信息来源，并经常与气候、人口、农业和/或基础设施的区域数据相结合。目前仅有关于营养不良患病率的汇总地理信息可免费获取，大多通过网络地图可视化或可下载的地图图像展示。家庭和地方层面缺乏详细的地理数据是深入评估营养不良及其与潜在影响因素之间联系的主要限制因素。
我们建议将与营养不良相关的研究与GIScience的最新发展相结合，如众包地理数据收集、（基于网络的）可互操作的空间健康数据基础设施以及（动态）信息融合方法，这将有助于加深对这一复杂现象的理解。
