PreprintReviewVersion 1Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?
Version 1
: Received: 24 March 2024 / Approved: 25 March 2024 / Online: 25 March 2024 (11:25:05 CET)
How to cite:
Britton, T.R.; Baslik, P.; Schmid, L.A.; Heinz, B. Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?. Preprints2024, 2024031470. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1470.v1
Britton, T.R.; Baslik, P.; Schmid, L.A.; Heinz, B. Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?. Preprints 2024, 2024031470. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1470.v1
Britton, T.R.; Baslik, P.; Schmid, L.A.; Heinz, B. Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?. Preprints2024, 2024031470. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1470.v1
APA Style
Britton, T.R., Baslik, P., Schmid, L.A., & Heinz, B. (2024). Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1470.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Britton, T.R., Lena Anna Schmid and Boris Heinz. 2024 "Enhancing Understanding Through Data Visualization: What Can Available Data Reveal About Access to Energy in Displacement Contexts on the African Continent?" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1470.v1
Abstract
The extent of access to energy of displaced populations in settlements and camps in Africa is largely unknown, given 94% of displaced persons without access to electricity and 81% with a reliance on biomass for cooking. A multitude of contextual factors, such as the location and the characteristics of housing, the legal status, the socio-cultural background and the availability of humanitarian and public services impact the living conditions and the needed energy services. Limitations in accessing energy services have direct, multilayered, and far-reaching implications, including impacts on health, nutrition, education, protection, and livelihood. The objective of this article is to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the current state of energy ac-cess in displacement contexts on the African continent by identifying and utilizing existing data. After a screening of the vast and various available information, setting up of a database, consoli-dating the gathered data as well as assessing the quality through a quality assessment method, the currently available information is visualized and discussed. Remarkable differences in the access to electricity for displaced persons across the countries are found. For both electricity and clean cooking, the availability for displaced persons ranges from nearly no access at all up to an access rate of 100%. More strikingly, the results also show that besides South Africa, and the se-lected countries in the Maghreb region, the access to both clean cooking and electricity for dis-placed persons is remarkably low. At the same time, the poor data quality does not allow to draw solid conclusions nor impactful implementation activities. Novel conceptual frameworks and indicators are needed. Future research needs to focus on a more comprehensive understand-ing of how energy is interwoven in the lives of displaced persons, before a set of energy indicators can be derived. It is essential that the concerned persons, the displaced persons themselves are in-cluded in the research in a meaningful way.
Keywords
access to energy; displacement contexts; humanitarian settings; data assessment; data visualization; electricity; cooking
Subject
Social Sciences, Geography, Planning and Development
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
