Abstract Mapping Social Indicators of Development and Analyzing the Trends: The GIS Way  Sushil Pradhan GIS Analyst Mountain Environment and Natural Resources’ Information Services (MENRIS) International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) G.P.O. Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: 977-1-5525313; Fax: 977-1-5524509 E-mail: sushil@icimod.org.np; suspradhan@icimod.org.np web: http://www.icimod.org  Birendra Bajracharya GIS Analyst Mountain Environment and Natural Resources’ Information Services (MENRIS) International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) G.P.O. Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: 977-1-5525313; Fax: 977-1-5524509 E-mail: bbajracharya@icimod.org.np web: http://www.icimod.org
Abstract
This paper discusses the development of Social Indicators of Development (SID) of Nepal utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS). Sustainable Development must balance the needs of society, the economy, and the environment. SID are various statistical values that collectively measure the capacity to meet present and future needs, and provides information crucial to decisions of national policy and to the general public. GIS can play important role in the development of social indicators because of its mapping and visualization capabilities. The beauty of GIS-based development indicators is that it helps people to visualize complex social indicators in a form of map and provides various “what if” planning scenarios results in quantitative measures that allow developers, planners, and community groups to feel greater comfort with the ultimate design decision. With this scope, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), in close collaboration with the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) of His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, jointly initiated an effort in developing GIS-based SID of Nepal. A policy-level workshop was organized at CBS to raise awareness about the GIS and its application for census mapping. In order to built-up the capacity of CBS and its staff in utilizing GIS, one week training on GIS for Census Mapping was organized. Thus trained CBS staffs were involved in the development of database of various social indicators and linking them with a spatial component. Mostly the census data have been used to derive the different population, social and economic indicators. In addition, data from Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Department of Health Services, Department of Education, and Statistical Year Books published by CBS have been used for deriving other indicators. More than 100 social indicators on population, economic activity, infrastructure, health and environment, education, child, gender, and agriculture, at district level, have been incorporated in GIS database to present the scenario of each indicator as of 2001 census in different districts. Similarly, the social indicators on similar themes from censuses 1971, 1981, and 1991 have also been incorporated in the database. Thus, a volume of atlas on “Nepal Census Indicators 2001 and Trend Analysis” has been produced, both in hardcopy and in digital form, which illustrates through a series of thematic maps at the district level. Each map pertaining to each table is accompanied by a text, which, in general, describes the definition, unit of measurement, national average, ranges of the indicator, and districts above and below the national averages. The volume contains two parts: Nepal Census Indicators 2001, including indicators generated apart from census data, and Indicators for Trend Analysis. The first part comprises eight sectors namely Population, Economic Activity, Infrastructure, Health and Environment, Education, Child, and Gender. The second part of the volume contains only four sectors namely Population, Economic activity, Infrastructure, and Education. This provided valuable information to various users, particularly planners, policy workers, development workers, researchers, and layman to know the indicators and their trends in these key areas in different districts of Nepal, and in appraising characteristics of development problems at the district level. The database have been embedded in a system developed by Jlets technologies Pvt. Ltd. of New Delhi, India, which is an efficient, user-friendly, and an interactive system, to visualize both part of this volume. The system mainly includes three components: 1. Nepal: Physical Characteristics, 2. Indicators: Census 2001, and 3. Trend: Census 1971-2001. The first component includes general spatial features of Nepal, namely - Land use, Elevation, Physiography, Geology, Ecology, Road, River, Soil, Protected areas, and climatic maps such as average annual rainfall, average temperature in January, average temperature in July. The second component includes Census 2001 indicators comprising of eight sectors as mentioned above. In this component, user can create and visualize thematic maps based on different indicators. The user can define data classification method (Equal Ranges, Quantile, and Equal Count), no. of class ranges (1 to 10), and choose own color shades from the color pallete, and thus, can create and visualize their own map. It also provide important statistical information, such as minimum and maximum values with district names, mean, sum, and count. The system includes basic functionalities such as, zooming, panning, searching, labeling, and querying the database. The user can dynamically query the database and view the corresponding district(s) (spatial components). The third component of the system includes two sub-components: Single Year and Multiple Year. The first sub-component allows to create and visualize thematic maps (in the similar fashion of second component) on four sectors namely - Population, Economic activity, Infrastructure, and Education, for individual years - 1971, 1981, 1991, and 2001. In second sub-component, user can create and visualize four thematic maps (for four individual year) of the same indicator of four sectors, as mentioned above, which allows comparing the characteristic of indicators in different districts in different four years. The advantage of this component is it provide a line graph to present the trend of each indicator during four year of periods. It, also, provide statistical information (min, max, mean, sum, count) for each year. The beauty of this system is user can derive other district level information and add in this system to create and visualize maps. In overall, this is an ideal effort and useful for planners and policy makers in understanding the development problems at district level and in prioritizing the districts for development based on these indicators for the sustainable development of Nepal. It is envisaged to carry out similar effort in other ICIMOD member countries in future. |