GIS/SIG is a system capable of capturing, storing, analysing, and displaying geographically referenced information. Basic features are: Geo-referencing data; Vector v. Raster data; Features, Layers and Attributes; Relationships & Geo-databases; Spatial Analysis. Poverty maps made in GIS are most useful to policy-makers and researchers when they are finely disaggregated, i.e. when they represent small geographic units, such as cities, towns, or villages. Unfortunately, almost all household surveys are too small to be representative at such levels of disaggregation, and most census data do not contain the required information to calculate poverty.
