This tool uses satellite imagery and spatial databases to facilitate fighting hunger and rural poverty. GeoNetwork's InterMap viewer enables users to overlay maps from multiple servers housed at development institutions worldwide to create a customised thematic composite map on their own computer covering such variables as soil quality, vegetation and population density, and marketing access. The project organisers say the tool is used to identify problems and to suggest possible solutions.

"By overlaying various map layers, InterMap can illustrate the spatial relationship between a series of variables. It can suggest, for example, the extent to which a poor transport infrastructure is keeping a region with a rich agricultural endowment in poverty. Its use of free, open-source software minimises costs to users - a particular plus for those in developing countries, who can use, modify and redistribute the system source code and do not need to rely on foreign suppliers or costly proprietary software."

"These maps, which may plot soil quality, vegetation, population density, or marketing access, can then be superimposed onto each other, allowing researchers to analyze the ‘variables of hunger.' The free, open-source software also provides non-profits, international agencies, and research institutions with a way to standardize, store, and share their data."

GeoNetwork's Intermap software is available to governments of developing countries with the hope that they will be able to isolate the causes of food shortages in their nations. "The tool promotes multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development by allowing FAO, other UN agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and research institutions worldwide to share and distribute geographically-referenced data more easily".

The system was tested and evaluated by 12 international and governmental agencies during field trials in Mozambique. These agencies, who work on "agriculture, food security and humanitarian issues have been using it since September 2003 to share information and avoid duplication. The system has also been implemented in its regional bureaux in Senegal, South Africa and Uganda."

Agriculture, Economic Development, Food Security, Information Access and Sharing Technology.