Toward Modeling Regionally Specific Human Security Using GIS: Case Study Cambodia

A new methodology for measuring human security is presented. The three stages of the methodology are: (i) threat assessment, (ii) data collection and organization, and (iii) data visualization and analysis, using Geographic Information Systems. Results from a Cambodia case study are highlighted. The United Nations Development Program’s notion of human security, which gives equal weight to economic, health, food, political, personal and environmental factors is used. Country specific threats in each category are determined and local, spatially referenced data are collected. In this paper, poverty, dengue fever and tuberculosis are used as examples of the analytic process. Regions of Cambodia exposed to all three of these threats (‘hotspots’) are located and spatial correlation between poverty, dengue fever and tuberculosis is calculated. The methodology (i) advances a broad concept of human security, (ii) will potentially assist policy and decision makers and (iii) identifies research questions that cannot be resolved using single sector analysis.