International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B2. Istanbul 2004 
1. THE POVERTY SCOURGE 
1.1 Introduction 
The poverty scourge is being tackled at global, regional, 
national and local levels as 1.2 billion people are estimated to 
be currently living on less than one dollar a day (extreme 
poverty). This need for Global Poverty Reduction has been 
identified over the years. Principle 5 of the 1992 RIO 
Declaration on environment and development states that: 
"all States and all people shall cooperate in the 
essential task of eradicating poverty as an 
indispensable requirement for sustainable 
development, in order to decrease the disparities in 
standards of living and better meet the needs of the 
majority of the people of the world” (UN, 1999). 
The United Nations Millennium Development Goal also has as 
its focus the halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of 
people living in extreme poverty and those who suffer from 
hunger (World Bank, 2002). 
1.2 Poverty Measurement 
Poverty comprises of both income and human poverty, the two 
basic categories of measures often used in measuring poverty. 
Income poverty involves the inability to fulfil basic material 
needs, including securing adequate nutrition, health, education 
and shelter. Income poverty can be further classified into 
extreme (absolute) poverty which is a lack of income necessary 
to satisfy basic food needs and overall (relative) poverty which 
is a lack of income necessary to satisfy essential non-food 
needs, such as for clothing, energy and shelter as well as food 
needs. A person is considered poor if he or she is unable to 
secure the goods and services to meet these basic material 
needs. Human poverty widens the concept of deprivation to 
include quality of life, risk, vulnerability to poverty, lack of 
autonomy, powerlessness and lack of self respect (see Bank, 
2002). By definition, human poverty is lack of basic human 
capabilities: illiteracy, malnutrition, abbreviated life span, poor 
maternal health, illness from preventable diseases. Indirect 
measures are lack of access to goods, services and 
infrastructure-energy, sanitation, education, communication, 
drinking water, all necessary to sustain basic human capabilities 
(UNDP, 2000). 
Income poverty is measured in its three dimensions of incidence 
(headcount), intensity (depth), severity (degree). Income 
measures are unable to capture aspects of welfare such as 
health, access to social services, water or household 
composition such as household size. This shortcoming makes 
the measurement of human poverty important with the use of 
anthropometric measures such as quality of life. Several indices 
have been developed to measure either type of poverty e.g, 
FGT (Foster-Greer-Thorbecke) decomposable class of poverty 
index (Foster et al, 1984), QHL (Household Quality of Life) 
poverty index (Akinyemi, 2002), HPI (Human Poverty Index: 
UNDP, 1997, 2000). 
A best practice for poverty reduction is an integrated 
management approach which combines several indices of 
poverty assessment, alleviation and monitoring. This approach 
would enable collaboration between government authorities, 
non-governmental organizations, donor agencies, international 
organizations, the research community and also include public 
participation. — Until now sectoral, piecemeal approaches 
characterize many PAPs in different parts of the world, 
especially in developing countries. Most PAPs are 
geographically blind revealing a weak link, theoretically and 
practically, between poverty and geographic location. The 
spatial dimension to the problem of poverty is often missed out 
in effort to combat poverty. For instance, knowing the spatial 
pattern of poverty facilitates the targeting of PAP especially 
with the use of geographic targeting techniques (Akinyemi, 
2003). 
The Geographic Targeting Geo-Information System (GTGIS) 
designed as a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) for 
poverty management integrates: 
I. Econometric and anthropometric (Income and quality 
of life) measures in its poverty assessment module 
2. Knowledge of social, economic, demographic and 
geographic determinants of poverty and its 
alleviation 
3. Monitoring of impacts of PAP on poverty levels over 
time 
The preliminary design of the GTGIS focuses on: 
1. The use of relational data structure in defining the 
conceptual schema of the database. The non-spatial 
information was modelled to create a comprehensive 
database model for poverty management using the 
Entity-Relationship (ER) semantic data modelling 
technique 
Geometrically representing poverty (although an 
intangible social phenomenon) as a vector for 
formalization in the GIS 
3. A modular system to create a socio-economic data 
abstraction model for poverty assessment which is 
input into targeted poverty alleviation schemes 
4.  Annexing available knowledge about impact of the 
various PAP on poverty reduction in order to indicate 
the best practices to adopt for poverty management 
No 
This paper describes the spatial analysis requirements of the 
GTGIS, the system modular architecture and illustrates with the 
income poverty assessment module by identifying objects and 
their properties in the database. 
2. GEOGRAPHIC TARGETING GEO-INFORMATION 
SYSTEM (GTGIS) MODEL 
GTGIS is a geographic targeting model developed to assess 
poverty and to simulate poverty alleviation schemes targeted at 
the poor based on where they live. The model exemplifies the 
poverty management concept which comprises of poverty 
assessment, alleviation simulation and poverty monitoring 
modules in a GIS based SDSS (see figure 1). 
A detailed review of the modular structure used in the GTGIS 
model can be found in Akinyemi (2003). 
2.1 Poverty Assessment Module 
This module is concerned with measuring poverty levels of both 
income poverty and human poverty. Maps produced in this 
module fall into the category of Poverty Inventory Mapping 
(PIM), which connotes the idea of “what is where”, Le. the 
spatial distribution of poverty levels (both income and human 
poverty). 
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