Key Concepts

The Livelihoods Explorer Database uses HEA terminology in specific ways. In particular, the following terms are used in ways that may not be immediately obvious to an HEA practitioner.

See the Metadata Standards page for more.

Primary Livelihood Systems

The dominant patterns of livelihoods identified in the development of a Livelihood Zone map, for example pastoralism, fisheries, or irrigated cropping, are called Primary Livelihood Systems. These are often called production systems by HEA practitioners.

Wealth Groups

Wealth Group Categories allow for the comparison of the local definitions of Wealth Groups across all BSS. These are standardized from the BSS 'WB' worksheet in Column B and the 'Data' worksheet in Row 3. Wealth Categories include options such as Very poor, Poor, Medium, and Better off.

A Wealth Group is a group of households belonging to a specific Wealth Group Category in a specific community or attributed to a Baseline summary.

Wealth Group Characteristics are potential productive characteristics of a Wealth Group, such as number of children at school, type of housing, or owning a computer.

A Wealth Group Characteristic Value is the value assigned to a Wealth Characteristics for a specific Wealth Group in a BSS. These values may be numbers or words/short phrases.

Livelihood Strategies and Activities

Livelihood Strategy Types include things like milk production, crop production, food purchase, relief aid, and wild food gathering. See a full list. They are used to categorize Livelihood Strategies for ease of comparison.

A Livelihood Strategy is one of a set of options used by households in a Livelihood Zone to obtain food and cash income and acquire the items needed to live.

When a Livelihood Strategy is used by a specific Wealth Group, it is called a Livelihood Activity.

Seasons

A Country must have a set of Season definitions set up in the database before the pipeline will be able to read data for the Country.

The Seasons for a Country are organized such that the set of seasons covers a 12 month period with each month assigned to one season and no season sharing a month. Aliases are used to find a season that corresponds to information in the Baseline Storage Sheets (BSS).

Any Seasons referenced within the BSS must have an accompanying definition.

• Each definition should identify:

  • Geography, if applicable: Some countries have different seasonal patterns in different parts of the country or for different primary livelihood systems. In this case, the season definition must also be associated with the relevant livelihood zones or other geographic boundaries.

  • Purpose: For each Country or Country + Geography for multiple seasonal patterns, there must be three sets of seasons differentiated by Purpose. There must be one set of seasons for Milk Production, an identical set of seasons for Butter Production, and one set with Purpose null. Livelihood Strategy Type other than Milk Production or Butter Production will use the null Purpose set of Seasons. Each Purpose must contain a set of entries that includes all months of the year without repeating or overlapping months.

  • Type of season: Harvest, post-harvest, lean, etc.

  • Typical start and end: The start and end of the season in months or number of days from the start of the year

  • Milking cohorts, if applicable: For milk production, identify whether the seasons are for multiple cohorts of animals or early and late milking seasons for a single cohort.

  • Aliases: one season may be referenced in different ways within a Baseline or within a Country (i.e., Season 1 or Season A). These must be specified as aliases for the relevant Season Purposes for the pipeline to read those Seasons.

• Examples:

  • Season 1: Cropping, main harvest season; October-December

  • Season 2: Milking, second cohort; April-June