QGIS Food Security Vulnerability Mapping Training Course

Course overview

Food-security teams must turn scattered household surveys, market prices, rainfall indicators, livelihood data and administrative boundaries into maps that support targeting, programme design and situation reporting. Poorly prepared maps can conceal data gaps, misrepresent population exposure or lead decision-makers to prioritise the wrong locations. This course equips participants to build defensible food security vulnerability maps in QGIS, with attention to indicator selection, spatial data quality, classification choices and humanitarian communication requirements.

Participants work through the full mapping workflow: sourcing and documenting spatial data, preparing administrative and settlement layers, joining food-security indicators to geographic units, calculating composite vulnerability scores, mapping market access and hazard exposure, and producing choropleth, proportional-symbol and bivariate maps. They learn to use QGIS attribute tables, joins, field calculations, geoprocessing tools, symbology, layouts and atlas outputs. The course also addresses responsible interpretation of proxy indicators, uncertainty, population denominators and the difference between food insecurity prevalence, severity and vulnerability.

Training is delivered through guided demonstrations and hands-on work using a realistic humanitarian assessment dataset. Participants complete a structured mapping project that combines household food consumption, coping strategy, market, rainfall and population data for a selected response area. They leave with a documented QGIS project, a reproducible vulnerability-mapping workflow, decision-ready map layouts and an action plan for applying the methods to their organisation's assessment or early-warning process.

The course is suited to staff supporting needs assessments, food-security analysis, cash and voucher programming, geographic targeting, monitoring and humanitarian coordination. It is valuable for professionals who need to produce maps themselves and for managers who need staff able to review vulnerability maps critically before they inform allocation or response decisions.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Prepare food-security spatial datasets by cleaning attributes, standardising identifiers and documenting data sources in QGIS
• Join household survey, market-price and population indicators to administrative boundary layers using reliable geographic keys
• Calculate a transparent composite vulnerability score with QGIS Field Calculator and weighted indicator logic
• Apply choropleth classification methods and colour schemes appropriate for food-security prevalence and severity data
• Map travel access to markets and services using buffers, proximity analysis and road-network proxy measures
• Overlay hazard, rainfall and livelihood-zone data to identify geographically concentrated vulnerability patterns
• Design decision-ready map layouts with legends, scale bars, source notes, uncertainty statements and inset maps
• Produce a documented QGIS vulnerability-mapping project and map package for targeting or situation-reporting use

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Food Security Analysts — who translate assessment findings into geographic targeting and response priorities
• GIS Officers — who support humanitarian teams with spatial analysis and operational map production
• MEAL Officers — who need to visualise survey indicators and identify geographic disparities in programme outcomes
• Cash and Voucher Assistance Officers — who assess market access, price patterns and area-level vulnerability for transfer planning
• Humanitarian Programme Managers — who need to scrutinise maps used in allocation, targeting and response design
• Early Warning and Disaster Risk Reduction Officers — who combine rainfall, hazard and livelihood data to anticipate food-security stress

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable working with spreadsheets and tabular data, including columns, records, filters and simple data cleaning. Familiarity with food-security concepts such as household surveys, market prices, food consumption, coping strategies, livelihood zones or administrative levels is helpful, but not essential. No prior QGIS, programming, statistics or remote-sensing experience is required; this is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Complete beginners should expect to spend the first day learning the QGIS interface, file structure and core map layers before progressing to joins, calculations and spatial analysis.

Training methodology

The instructor combines short, tool-focused demonstrations with individual QGIS practice using a shared humanitarian response scenario. Participants load and inspect real-world-style boundaries, household indicators, market data, rainfall anomalies and population datasets; then complete joins, calculations, overlays and map layouts step by step. Facilitated case discussions examine how classification choices affect targeting conclusions. Small groups review each other's maps against a decision-use checklist. On the final day, each participant adapts the workflow to an operational use case and defines the data, review steps and outputs needed at work.

Course outline

Day 1: Food-security mapping foundations in QGIS

• Food security, food insecurity and vulnerability mapping concepts
• QGIS interface, project structure and coordinate reference systems
• Administrative boundaries, settlements and livelihood-zone reference layers
• Vector, raster and tabular data formats used in humanitarian analysis
• Data provenance, metadata and humanitarian data-quality checks
• Loading CSV, GeoPackage, Shapefile and web data layers in QGIS
• Attribute-table inspection, filtering and missing-value identification

Workshop: Participants create a clean QGIS project for a response area and produce an inventory of available food-security, population and reference datasets.

Day 2: Preparing indicators and measuring vulnerability

• Food Consumption Score, Reduced Coping Strategies Index and Household Hunger Scale indicators
• Administrative coding and geographic identifier standardisation
• Table joins and relation checks between survey results and boundary layers
• Field Calculator expressions for recoding and indicator creation
• Weighted composite vulnerability-score design
• Population denominators, prevalence and estimated caseload calculations
• Outlier checks, null handling and validation of calculated fields

Workshop: Participants join assessment indicators to district boundaries and calculate a documented composite vulnerability score and estimated affected-population field.

Day 3: Spatial analysis for access, hazards and exposure

• Buffer analysis for market, health-service and distribution-point access
• Distance-to-feature calculations and travel-access proxy interpretation
• Overlay analysis with rainfall anomaly and flood or drought hazard layers
• Clipping, dissolving and intersecting layers for operational areas
• Livelihood-zone analysis and contextual interpretation
• Raster symbology and sampling for environmental indicator layers
• Identifying priority locations through multi-layer spatial queries

Workshop: Participants build a priority-area layer by combining high vulnerability scores, poor market access, rainfall stress and population exposure.

Day 4: Cartography and defensible communication

• Choropleth classification methods: equal interval, quantile and natural breaks
• Sequential, diverging and colour-blind-aware map colour schemes
• Proportional symbols for caseloads, market prices and affected populations
• Bivariate mapping of vulnerability and hazard exposure
• Legend design, labels, scale bars, north arrows and locator maps
• Map source notes, dates, caveats and uncertainty communication
• QGIS Print Layouts, map themes and atlas-based map series

Workshop: Participants produce a two-page decision map pack containing a vulnerability map, a caseload map and documented interpretation notes.

Day 5: Operational application and map production workflow

• Food-security targeting criteria and geographic prioritisation logic
• IPC evidence considerations and responsible map interpretation
• KoboToolbox survey exports and repeatable QGIS import workflows
• Humanitarian Data Exchange sourcing and dataset citation
• Quality assurance checklist for vulnerability-map review
• Exporting print, PDF and image map products for reports and coordination
• Version control, file packaging and reproducible QGIS project handover

Workshop: Participants complete and present a documented vulnerability-mapping package, then develop an application plan for a live assessment, early-warning or targeting workflow.

Tools & standards covered

QGIS 3.x, KoboToolbox, Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), IPC Acute Food Insecurity Classification

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions