Exploring Undernourishment: Part 1 — Introduction and Overview
A Visual Data Exploration Research Project to Better Understand the Nuances of Our Global Nutrition
Contents
This is Part 1 of an 8-Part research project aiming to better understand the nuances of our global nutrition. It explores this topic through the utilisation of data visualisation and data science techniques. It is complimented by a Web App: ExploringUndernourishment, which is freely available to the public.
Part 1 — Introduction and Overview ← Selected page
Part 2 — Literature Review
Part 3 — Data Exploration
Part 4 — Research Area 1: General Trend
Part 5 — Research Area 2: Most Successful Countries
Part 6 — Research Area 3: Surprising Trends
Part 7 — Research Area 4: Most Influential Indicator
Part 8 — Recommendations and Conclusions
Executive Summary
Our World today has many issues, and the Prevalence of Undernourishment is just one of them. Over the past twenty years, the United Nations, through the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has collected data on many countries, and have helped to influence and improve their Undernourishment overall.
This report, and the associated Data Exploration App, looks to explore the data provided by the FAO, and to understand it’s nuances, to learn what information it is telling us, and to derive meaning from it. The research activities undertaken focus on four key areas: 1) General Trends; 2) Most Successful Countries; 3) Surprising Trends; and 4) The Most Influential Indicator. This report embarks on an exploratory data analysis through the narratives told by this data.
Resultingly, there are three key recommendations provided by this report:
- Get more data;
- Focus on countries with an upward trend; and
- Educate communities on basic agricultural principles.
The result thereof, will enable the empowerment of individual communities to look to improve their economic situation, which will scale to individual countries trends, and also to broader regional trends. The analysis finds that indicators which have the most influence on the Prevalence of Undernourishment are the value of food production, dietary adequacy, protein supply, political stability, and the value of food imports. Therefore, by looking to address these features at a community level, these recommendations aim to make a positive impact on the future trends of the Prevalence of Undernourishment.
Introduction
The United Nations (UN) has placed a lot of emphasis on their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (UN 2020a). One of which is Goal 2: Zero Hunger (UN 2020b), from which the UN has set up the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO 2020a). This organisation has embarked on a journey to help understand and address the worlds needs for access to food. One of the indicators that they have set up is the Prevalence of Undernourishment (FAO 2020b), which is defined as “an estimate of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life” (FAO 2020b).
This report is complemented by an online application which takes an interactively visual exploration through the data provided by the FAO. The App has been freely published, and accessible at the following locations:
- Exploration App:
https://chrimaho.shinyapps.io/ExploringUndernourishment/ - Source Code:
https://github.com/chrimaho/ExploringUndernourishment/
Research Questions
There are four Areas of Research that will be explored in this analysis.
- Research Area 1: General Trend
— Question: What has been the trend of Undernourishment in the last 20 years?
— Hypothesis: There has been a general trend to decrease the prevalence over the last two decades. - Research Area 2: Most Successful Country
— Question: Which country is most successfully addressing undernourishment?
— Hypothesis: South-East Asian countries (for example, Vietnam) have made substantial progress in recent decades to break out of poverty; therefore there has been an associated success trend in their prevalence of undernourishment. - Research Area 3: Surprising Trends
— Question: Have there been any substantial increases (or decreases) in undernourishment?
— Hypothesis: Due to events happening in the Middle Eastern region of the world, this has lead to some negative results on some countries ability to address their Prevalence of Undernourishment score. - Research Area 4: Most Influential Indicator
— Question: Which of the features in the FAO data set is most indicative of the prevalence of undernourishment (most influential feature)?
— Hypothesis: There will be an interesting trade-off between the self-sustaining indicators (such as amount of arable land and ability to grow crops), and the free-trade indicators (such as).
References
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the Unites Nations (FAO) 2020a, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, viewed 11 May 2020, <http://www.fao.org/home/en/>.
FAO 2020b, Sustainable Development Goals: Indicator 2.1.1 — Prevalence of undernourishment, viewed 11 May 2020, <http://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/2.1.1/en/>.
United Nations (UN) 2020a, Sustainable Development Goals, viewed 11 May 2020, <https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/>.
UN 2020b, Goal 2: Zero Hunger, viewed 11 May 2020, <https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/>.
Read On:
Previous section: -
Next section: Literature Review
