nbul 2004 
PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF A SPATIAL DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR 
POVERTY MANAGEMENT 
F. O. Akinyemi 
Department of Geography, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 220001, Nigeria 
bakin_yem@yahoo.com 
Commission I, WG II/5 
KEY WORDS: Decision Support, GIS, Model, System. Indicators, Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE), Poverty management 
ABSTRACT: 
Saddled with the burden of increasing poverty among majority of their populace, many African countries are initiating various 
Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAP). Many of these programmes however miss out the influence of geography and spatial 
variables as determinants of poverty, that is, the spatial dimension of the problem of poverty. Attempts are increasing being made to 
use GIS for poverty analysis and visualization in the emerging field of poverty mapping sees which poverty maps as useful input into 
decision making. However, experience with the use of GIS for decision making in the social sciences, especially for poverty 
handling has revealed several shortcomings. A major problem arises from the fuzzy nature of such a social problem which makes it 
in most cases to be “unstructured”. Hence, this necessitates the input of preferences, intuitive judgement and the to examine choices 
of alternatives in the decision making process. This limits GIS as a decision support tool when handling complex, multifaceted, ill- 
structured social problems, despite its increasing analytical capabilities. This paper describes the preliminary design of the 
Geographic Targeting Geo-Information System (GTGIS) which integrates various GIS tools, socio-economic data modelling and 
Decision Support System’s (DSS) capabilities of choice modelling for poverty management. 
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