Date of Award

January 2024

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

School of Public Health

First Advisor

Nathaniel Raymond

Abstract

South Sudan is consistently considered the hungriest country in the world further exasperated by armed conflict and extreme climate events such as drought and flooding. This thesis includes a remote sensing analysis of thermal activity to assist in identifying areas with higher or lower Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scales in certain contexts. Key Findings reveal a statistically significant negative correlation between U.S. dollar price of cereals and tubers and observed thermal activity (p-value=0.0280703, rho=-0.6727273), indicating that an increase in one variable may coincide with a decrease in the other within Rumbek Centre and Gogrial West. These findings may be consistent with agricultural preparation and decrease in market prices and may be consistent with seasonal planting or a decrease in thermal activity and increase in market prices. Additional findings include statistically significant positive correlations between conflict events and fatalities (p-value=3.251685e-06, rho=0.9587257) in addition to IPC and U.S. dollar price of cereals and tubers (p-value= 0.005121073, rho= 0.7745967) in Rumbek Centre and Gogrial West. The detected correlations between observed thermal activity and food prices, then food prices and IPC may indicate the possibility of a pathway between these variables. This thesis aims to study how with proper observation, thermal activity can indicate conflict related events which may relate to higher IPC while also studying how agricultural practices may relate to lower IPC.

Comments

This is an Open Access Thesis.

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