London: A smartphone app, which combines weather and soil moisture data from satellites with crowd-sourced data on the vulnerability of the population to malnutrition and other relevant socio-economic data has been developed by scientists.
Drought and crop failure can often be predicted by monitoring the weather and measuring soil moisture. But other risk factors, such as socio-economic problems or violent conflicts, can endanger food security too.
The system developed by scientists at Vienna University of Technology and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, has yielded promising results during tests in the Central African Republic.
The digital questionnaire of SATIDA COLLECT can be adapted to local eating habits, as the answers and the GPS coordinates of every assessment are stored locally on the phone.
When an internet connection is available, the collected data are uploaded to a server and can be analysed along with satellite-derived information about drought risk.
In the end a map could be created, highlighting areas where the danger of malnutrition is high.
