ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the use of models to predict and analyse seasonality in income and food access. Modelling needs to be differentiated from monitoring; it aims to find a way of describing the variations in income and expenditure that households are likely to experience, given a set of reasonably good data on prevailing conditions and household livelihoods, while monitoring analyses and reports on actual situations that have occurred. Modelling, therefore, has a predictive ability and the resultant forecasting is useful for planning prevention, mitigation and reactive responses against future occurrences. Not only does modelling provide a predictive ability but it also helps practitioners try out different scenarios at relatively low cost; informed planners can then better devise and weigh up contingencies and programmes that are as efficient as possible in assisting those most in need. Seasonality, with its cyclical patterns, can fortunately be incorporated quite easily into the annual livelihoods models, giving the users and interpreters of the outcomes new temporal detail and resolution.
