<b>LADI: A Landscape-Adjusted Deprivation Indicator for economic resource allocation</b>

DescriptionLADI is a descriptive composite which blends the Global Gridded Relative Deprivation Index (GRDI) (CIESIN, 2022) with land cover entropy (Shannon, 1948) into a single [0,1] surface. Higher values indicate cells where high relative deprivation co-occurs with high land-cover fragmentation — conditions frequently observed in informal settlements, unplanned peri-urban growth, or areas under agricultural and environmental stress. LADI is a sharpened, locally-informed view of deprivation, not a replacement for GRDI itself. Such data is useful for targeting and prioritization to direct limited resources (aid, infrastructure, outreach) toward cells where deprivation and fragmentation coincide. This indicator is provided at ~1kmx1km grid cell, covering the entire country of Benin in Geotiff format.Note: LADI is not a single causal poverty measure.How to read the layersHigh LADI: deprivation and landscape fragmentation reinforce each other — the strongest candidate zones for closer investigation or intervention.Bivariate hotspot map: separates cells that are fragmented and deprived from cells that are high on only one dimension, avoiding false positives from GRDI alone.Local R² (GWR): shows where the entropy–deprivation relationship actually holds.No-data flags: cells missing GRDI, entropy are flagged as 0 in LADI (to cover full spatial extent), and retained for bivariate and local R² map for users to view them independently.
ReferencesShannon, C.E. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27(3), 379–423.CIESIN, Columbia University. (2022). Global Gridded Relative Deprivation Index (GRDI), Version 1. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). doi.org