DEVELOPING A PROTOTYPE OF GEOINFORMATION SYSTEM FOR POVERTY ASSESSMENT TO SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POVERTY ALLEVIATION PROGRAM IN VIETNAM Case study of Ha Tinh province Nguyen Chan Huyen February, 2003 DEVELOPING A PROTOTYPE OF GEOINFORMATION SYSTEM FOR POVERTY ASSESSMENT TO SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POVERTY ALLEVIATION PROGRAM IN VIETNAM Case study of Ha Tinh province by Nguyen Chan Huyen Thesis submitted to the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geoinformatics. Degree Assessment Board Dr. Ir. R.A. de By (Chairman) Prof. Ir. P. van der Molen (External Examiner) Mr. C.M.J. Paresi (First Supervisor) Dr. Ing. W.H. de Man (Second Supervisor) INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR GEO-INFORMATION SCIENCE AND EARTH OBSERVATION ENSCHEDE, THE NETHERLANDS Disclaimer This document describes work undertaken as part of a programme of study at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation. All views and opinions expressed therein remain the sole responsibility of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of the institute. ABSTRACT Poverty-Alleviation Program is the most important agenda in development strategies of Vietnam Government. The present study presents an approach toward the development of a geoinformation system (GIS) for poverty assessment to support decision making in the implementation of this program. Presently, poverty assessment is formulated at three administrative levels: district, province and national levels to define the list of poor communes for the whole country. It follows a bottom-up approach, which makes assessment in higher levels dependent on information from lower levels. Another main shortcoming is that it uses only socioeconomic data and manual method for poverty analysis. In this context, GIS is considered as a technique, which could strengthen the effectiveness of poverty assessment by changing bottom-up approach to a more integrated approach, providing stronger tools and adding spatial data for poverty analysis. For developing a GIS for poverty assessment this study employs the Structured System Development Methodology which includes three phases: problem definition, system design and implementation. For problem definition, the study takes into consideration the problems of current poverty assessment process, the needs and the requirements of the users of poverty information to ensure that this process will be improved and all users will be provided with the information they need according to their interests. The results of this phase prove that apart from socioeconomic data, poverty assessment needs to include spatial data as well to apply more powerful tools for poverty analysis that could be supported by GIS. System design has been performed on the base of process modeling and data modeling. The process model illustrates the improvements of poverty assessment that could be achieved by using GIS. This model integrated operations with the objective to overcome the problems of current process. Data modeling explains the principle for integrating geodatabase from socioeconomic database and spatial database in order to support poverty assessment in GIS environment. A prototype was developed to examine the effectiveness of proposed system for poverty assessment by using MS Access and ArcView software packages. At the end, this study gives some discussions about technical and institutional conditions for adopting and implementing GIS for poverty assessment in the framework of Poverty Alleviation Program. i AKNOWLEDGEMENT At the moment of completing my thesis, I dearly extend my best thanks to every one who helped me, supported me and worked with me during the time of my study at ITC - the remember able period of my life. I would like to express my warmest appreciation to the Dutch Government for the fellowship that made my study at ITC possible through the Netherlands Fellowship Program (NFP). My special thanks are expressed to leaders of my organization - Vietnam GDLA, Prof. Dang Hung Vo and Dr. Le Phuoc Zung who gave me an opportunity to undertake my study in the Netherlands. My sincere and deepest gratitude is to my first supervisor, Mr. Chris Paresi and my second supervisor, Dr. Erik de Man for their guidance, feedback and recommends. Whenever needed you always gave me constructive comments and suggestions, and left the necessary free-space for me to realize my own ideas. My best thanks to Dr. Dick Van der Zee, Dr. Martin Ellis for your “by-pass” conversations about the life and the study. The talks with you helped me very much to refresh my brain and to recover my enthusiasm to study. Also my faithful thanks to Mr. C.G. Huurneman MSc - program director, Dr. T. Bouloucos - student advisor, and all teachers at ITC for your nice guides, lectures, lessons that helped me to absorb knowledge in the best ways. Many thanks to my classmates (GFM2-2001) from around the world who gave me very nice company and I have leaned a lot about different cultures. I was really fortunate to be with you. I also want to thank my country mates and all friends from different countries I met at ITC for their friendship and spending time together. Finally, I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to my parents, my brothers, sisters, my husband and children, and my friends-colleagues from my department - Cartographic Publishing House. I am so thankful for your support and encouragement to me. You are all the reasons that I could overcome any trouble I had here, far away from home. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgement ..................................................................................................................................................................... ii Table of contents ....................................................................................................................................................................... iii List of figures ................................................................................................................................................................................. v List of tables ................................................................................................................................................................................. vi List of abbreviations .............................................................................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background ........................................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. GIS use for poverty alleviation purpose in other countries ................................................................ 2 1.2.1. Monitoring poverty in Bangladesh in the spatial domain ....................................................... 2 1.2.2. GIS use in support of social services, South Africa ................................................................ 2 1.2.3. GIS use in urban poverty management in Nigeria .................................................................... 3 1.3. Case study area ................................................................................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Problem definition ............................................................................................................................................................ 5 1.5. Research Objectives ........................................................................................................................................................ 6 1.6. Research Questions ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 1.7. System development methodology ...................................................................................................................... 7 1.8. Research plan ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.9. Research structure ............................................................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 2: Literature review on concepts and approaches for poverty assessment .... 10 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................ 10 2.2. Concept for poverty analysis and assessment .............................................................................................. 10 2.2.1. Definition of poverty .................................................................................................................................... 10 2.2.2. Multidimensionality of poverty ...........................................................................................................