GIS for Public Health

RESULTS

 

To create integrated anlaysis, weighted overlay model was used. It provides the ability to weight and combine multiple inputs so in our project food security was calculated by incorporating weights to multiple factors that were important in causing insecurity in the study area. There are total of nine factors that were considered in our project. The total sum of the weights given to each factor should be equal to 100. Two scenarios were considered in order to give importance to different factors. 

 

In the first scenario, more importance was given to poverty and food stamps giving each one of them 20% of the equation. The equation came out to be:

 

Food insecurity = 0.10* (Average Spending on Food away from home) + 0.05 *(Streets Accessibility) + 0.05* (Highway Accessibility) +0.05* (Density of food facilities) +0.20* (Households below poverty level) + 0.20* (Households receiving food stamps by total households) + 0.05* (Accessibility to farmer markets) + 0.15* (Average spending on Fast food average) + 0.15 *(Average Consumer spending on fresh fruits and vegetables average)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the second scenario, importance was given to the accessibility to highways, food facilities and farmer markets. The following equation was obtained:

 

Food insecurity = 0.05* (Average spending on Food away from home) + 0.10 *(Streets Accessibility) + 0.15* (Highway Accessibility) +0.15* (Density of food facilities) +0.15* (Households below poverty level + 0.15* (Households receiving food stamps by total households + 0.15 * (Accessibility to farmer markets) + 0.05(Average spending on Fast food average) + 0.05 *(Average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

From our final maps of the two different scenarios, we concluded that food insecurity is random and can occur anywhere in the Upstate are of South Carolina. However, when focusing most on accessibility to food sources there tended to be a higher rate of food insecurity in the Upstate are than when the focus was put on poverty and food stamps. Before starting the project, we thought that more urban areas would be less food insecure because they are more populated allowing for more food resources in that area and more accessibility but we found that even some of the urban areas had a high level of food insecurity.