Structuring a Geospatial Information System for the Analysis of Food Security, Nutritional Intervention and Human Health Data in Panama
Published in XIX Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología – APANAC 2023, 2023
Authors: Kevin González Ortega, Eliecer Aguilar, Ana Gabriela Aizprúa, Eddy Cedeño, Javier Sánchez-Galán (Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá)
Venue: XIX Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología – APANAC 2023, Panama, September 26–29, 2023, pp. 356–362 (ISSN 2805-1807)
DOI: 10.33412/apanac.2023.3959 · PDF (open access, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Keywords: food security, web scraping, geo-referenced indicators, geographic information system, interdisciplinary spatial data analysis
Language: This paper is published in Spanish. The title above is an English translation.
Original title: Estructuración de un sistema de información geoespacial para el análisis de datos de seguridad alimentaria, intervenciones nutricionales y de salud humana en Panamá
Summary
Few studies in Panama look at food security and its link to poverty, and there was no geospatial information system that showed where nutritional interventions had been carried out. Much of the relevant data existed only as unstructured PDF reports from the Nutrition Program of Panama’s Ministry of Health (MINSA).
We built a reproducible pipeline that turns those reports into 96 geo-referenced indicators of living standards, weight and height for 2003–2014, linked to the boundaries of Panama’s provinces and comarcas and explored through interactive maps. The dataset is designed to become a layer of PRISM (Panama Research and Integrated Sustainability Model), where it can be analyzed alongside other layers such as water quality, biological connectivity and biodiversity.
Methodology
- Web scraping. We collected the nutritional-intervention reports published by MINSA’s Nutrition Program.
- Table extraction. We used Tabula to extract the indicator tables from the PDFs and export them as CSV.
- Consolidation. We merged all extracted tables into one dataset with pandas.
- Geospatial processing. We took province boundaries from an open GIS repository, added ISO 3166-2 codes as a join key, and exported a GeoJSON file.
- Visualization. We built an interactive Plotly dashboard with a selector for the nutrition indicators.
Results
| Source document | Indicators |
|---|---|
| VI National Height Census of First-Grade Schoolchildren (2007): coverage, stunting by area, sex, age and school type, nutritional status | 45 |
| VII National Height Census (2013/2014): coverage, mean and median height at age 7, stunting by area and age, change 2007→2013 | 46 |
| Report on the Nutritional Situation of Population Groups in Panama (2016): nutritional status of adults by health region | 5 |
| Total | 96 |
The work shows that web scraping, OCR-based table extraction, data consolidation and interactive maps together give a full picture of nutritional indicators in Panama. That picture can support decisions in public health and nutrition.
Related project: PRISM interactive dashboard, the current version of the map built from this data.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{gonzalez2023estructuracion,
title = {Estructuraci{\'o}n de un sistema de informaci{\'o}n geoespacial para el an{\'a}lisis de datos de seguridad alimentaria, intervenciones nutricionales y de salud humana en Panam{\'a}},
author = {Gonz{\'a}lez Ortega, Kevin and Aguilar, Eliecer and Aizpr{\'u}a, Ana Gabriela and Cede{\~n}o, Eddy and S{\'a}nchez-Gal{\'a}n, Javier},
booktitle = {XIX Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog{\'i}a -- APANAC 2023},
pages = {356--362},
year = {2023},
address = {Panam{\'a}},
doi = {10.33412/apanac.2023.3959}
}
Recommended citation: González Ortega, K., Aguilar, E., Aizprúa, A. G., Cedeño, E., & Sánchez-Galán, J. (2023). "Estructuración de un sistema de información geoespacial para el análisis de datos de seguridad alimentaria, intervenciones nutricionales y de salud humana en Panamá [Structuring a geospatial information system for the analysis of food security, nutritional intervention and human health data in Panama]." XIX Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología – APANAC 2023, pp. 356–362. https://doi.org/10.33412/apanac.2023.3959
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