Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

The GIS Centre is a support function to the research priority areas of the HSRC and, therefore, plays a role in providing and developing spatial information to projects being conducted by the researchers. In addition, the GIS Centre also provides services and develops spatial databases for external clients and stakeholders. Projects that the GIS Centre are busy with or are planning in the new year are presented below.

Impact of HIV/Aids in the health sector

The GIS Centre has assisted its colleagues in the Social Aspects of HIV/Aids (SAHA) in the implementation of this project. Part of the responsibility of the GIS Centre has been to produce maps of the sampled clinics throughout the country, to access information on deaths from the Population Register and contribute to the planning of the project.

Minimum Data Set (MDS) on ageing

The Department of Health commissioned the HSRC to undertake this project. It involves an evaluation of indicators on ageing and data sources that can be used in the project. Data from a variety of different sources (e.g. GIS, October Household Survey (OHS), census) will be used to create a MDS for South Africa.

SADC Development GIS

The GIS Centre secured funding from the SADC S&T Fund of the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) to develop a GIS for all fourteen SADC member states. The first phase of the project is to gather information at a district level on social and service access and need variables for all SADC countries. An analysis of the availability and accessibility of census information for SADC will also be conducted. A pilot project to develop a census GIS for one of the SADC countries will also be conducted. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) in Zimbabwe and other national collaborating centers in the region.

Pension Pay Points

The GIS Centre has over the last year been working with the Department of Social Development in gathering information on all the pension pay points in South Africa. The project entails gathering information on the geographic location of the pay points and through the use of questionnaires, collecting extensive attribute information on each pay point in the country. This project will enable the Department to understand the present situation with pay points and implement appropriate policy and planning decisions to ensure that the elderly people of South Africa are properly catered for.

Socio-economic atlas for South Africa

The GIS Centre is working in collaboration with several local institutions, organizations in France and the French Embassy in South Africa in developing a socio-economic atlas for this country. The intention is to develop products (ie electronic and hardcopy) to show the socio-economic character of South Africa at several different spatial levels so that decision makers throughout the country can use this information. The HSRC GIS Centre is hosting a French researcher Dr Nathalie Paralieu up until September 2002.

Cultural GIS

The GIS Centre has worked with DACST in putting together a GIS of all the arts and culture facilities in South Africa. The project will culminate in the dissemination of the information via a web that is to be hosted on both the DACST and HSRC's web pages.

Master sample

A master sample of 1 000 enumerator areas is in the process of being developed by the HSRC. The master sample will involve the identification of these enumerators throughout the country and then having orthophotographs flown of each one to get a detailed and current understanding of the number of people living in the area. This information will be used to select homesteads to be incorporated into the master sample. Having been able to identify the exact geographic location of these households, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) will be used to navigate fieldworkers into the correct area and right up to the selected homesteads. The intention of the master sample is to enable the HSRC to conduct longitudinal studies and to improve its ability to collect accurate social survey information.

Researcher projects

Consultants in the GIS Centre are working on several projects in the different priority areas of the HSRC. This includes providing information on the Human Resource Development strategy (HRD), graduate tracer studies, environmental indicators in South Africa and SADC, SA Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (SA-ADAM) project and a national study of migration.

Future projects

Several project ideas are being investigated, including the development of a web based system to disseminate the tabular and spatial information of the HSRC via the web. The GIS Centre is also hoping to collaborate with the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) to enable the dissemination of crime statistics at a police station level. It is also hoped that the crime statistics collected over several years can be analyzed to identify some crime trends in South Africa. A critical aspect of the future activities of the GIS Centre is to look at ways in which information required for decision-making can be collected via the web and using more automated techniques. Research on the identification of information needs of different user groups, the type of products to be developed and the channels of distribution is also being considered.

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