The following remarks were presented by Farah Abi Mosleh, Research Assistant at the American University of Beirut - during the Launch of the Lebanon Spatial project at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences (FAFS) 150th conference that took place during the AUB 150th anniversary
I don’t come from a Food Security (FS) Background. I am a Rural Community Development master’s student here at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences (FAFS) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Nonetheless, I am interested in the food security field, therefore I chose to work under my graduate assistantship with Rachel Bahn, Program Coordinator of Food Security Program at AUB.
We worked together on developing the Lebanon Spatial data atlas between last fall and this spring. It was an exciting and challenging experience because I didn’t know so much about spatial data then, or the different software we would be using. Therefore, we were given a training by IFPRI on how to create the spatial in five steps. The presentations were very useful and clear that guided us through the whole process. We were able in a limited time to collect a sufficient number of useful FS indicators for Lebanon covering the four pillars of FS: availability, access, utilization, and stability.
One of the types of software we used for processing the data was ArcGIS. This was the most exciting and difficult phase especially that we took the training in October 2015 and applied it starting March 2016 and I had never used it before. Sometimes it took me a whole day to discover what I was doing through suffering the web, looking into my notes and trial and error. Jean Francois Trinh Tan from IFPRI Research Support staff gave me huge support, we always had early morning Skype meetings to work through the process together to know where the problem was and how to manage it.
This experience gave me the chance to learn more about the four pillars of FS and what indicators are helpful for measuring and assessing it. I got the chance to read lots of reports about the situation in Lebanon and how the Syrian crisis is affecting it. I was able to understand the different methodologies used to measure for example poverty in Lebanon that we don’t sometimes recognize. In addition, I learnt how to use and process data through ArcGIS that was really challenging in the beginning but interesting. Finally, I understood the importance of being precise and patient when verifying the secondary data copied from different sources and that finding the data is easier than verifying it. This process consumed most of my time towards the end of the project.
As a user of Lebanon Spatial, I was able to utilize this atlas to support my thesis findings related to the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. I used information about the livestock production, number of farmers, and wheat production as I was studying the kishek value chain in the Chouf region. One special characteristic that makes this atlas unique and useful is that all data are available at the government, district and sub-district levels all under one map– which is difficult to find and access elsewhere. Lebanon Spatial can assist students, professors and researchers across Lebanon coming from different backgrounds and research interests. It provides a wide range of data on the household and national levels such as trade, imports, natural resources availability, energy, population, poverty, Syrian refugees, etc.…
I am so much glad I was given the opportunity and trust to collect and process the data and to contribute to the Lebanon spatial project. Thanks to AUB and IFPRI.
