A high-frequency mobile phone data collection approach for research in social-environmental systems: Applications in climate variability and food security in sub-Saharan Africa

Authors

Stacey A. Giroux, Indiana University Bloomington
Inna Kouper, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Lyndon Estes, Clark UniversityFollow
Jacob Schumacher, Indiana University Bloomington
Kurt Waldman, Indiana University Bloomington
Joel T. Greenshields, Indiana University Bloomington
Stephanie L. Dickinson, Indiana University Bloomington
Kelly K. Caylor, University of California, Santa Barbara
Tom P. Evans, The University of Arizona

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Collecting high-frequency social-environmental data about farming practices in sub-Saharan Africa can provide new insight into environmental changes that farmers face and how they respond within smallholder agro-ecosystems. Traditional data collection methods such as agricultural censuses are costly and not useful for understanding intra-annual and real-time decisions. Short-message service (SMS) has the potential to transform the nature of data collection in coupled social-ecological systems. We present a system for collecting, managing, and synthesizing weekly data from farmers, including data infrastructure for management of big and heterogeneous datasets; probabilistic data quality assessment tools; and visualization and analysis tools such as mapping and regression techniques. We discuss limitations of collecting social-environmental data via SMS and data integration challenges that arise when linking these data with other social and environmental data. In combination with high-frequency environmental data, such data will help ameliorate issues of scale mismatch and build resilience in environmental systems.

Publication Title

Environmental Modelling and Software

Publication Date

9-2019

Volume

119

First Page

57

Last Page

69

ISSN

1364-8152

DOI

10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.05.011

Keywords

farming, food security, high frequency data, short message service (SMS), Sub-Saharan Africa

Repository Citation

Giroux, Stacey A.; Kouper, Inna; Estes, Lyndon; Schumacher, Jacob; Waldman, Kurt; Greenshields, Joel T.; Dickinson, Stephanie L.; Caylor, Kelly K.; and Evans, Tom P., "A high-frequency mobile phone data collection approach for research in social-environmental systems: Applications in climate variability and food security in sub-Saharan Africa" (2019). Geography. 61.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/61

Copyright Conditions

Contains the accepted pre-print version.