Potential for the use of GIS and spatial analysis techniques in nutrition science

GIS provides excellent means for visualizing and analyzing epidemiological data, revealing trends, dependencies and inter-relationships. It can acquire, store, manage, and geographically integrate large amounts of information from different sources, programmes and sectors. Nutrition is one of the many areas of possible application of GIS methodologies. Public Health Nutrition in emergencies has only recently discovered the potential. Almost any nutrition survey aiming at defining the nutritional status in a certain area can be enhanced by a GIS presentation. This article study on the potential benefits, resource needed and constraints of applying Geographical Information Systems (GIS) analysis to a conventional nutritional survey dataset in a developing country.