Guest blogger Danny Sheehan is a geographer and data science student with the Built Environment and Health Project at Columbia University.
Rio das Pedras, home to approximately 63,500 residents, ranks as the third-largest informal community in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This tightly woven community has consistently attracted new residents while fostering a growing local economy. Despite these collective successes, residents still lack some essential services and infrastructure that developed areas often take for granted.
Seasonal flooding, heavy vehicle traffic, continuous construction, and soil instability create challenges for daily life in Rio das Pedras. Improvised waste disposal facilities and limited access to municipal services further increase health and safety risks. These conditions likely predispose residents to injuries and poor health outcomes. However, accurate data on the community’s overall health remains scarce, making it difficult to identify key areas for improvement. As a result, there is little evidence to guide infrastructure investment or other initiatives to protect the health of residents. To fill this gap, the Built Environment and Health Research Group at Columbia University (BEH) is undertaking a Community Needs Assessment (Community Health Diagnosis) for the Rio das Pedras area.
Rio Das Pedras, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística
Led by Dr. Gina Lovasi and sponsored by Medtronic Philanthropy, our research project has brought together an interdisciplinary group of experts to perform this initial community needs assessment in Rio das Pedras. In addition to creating a health profile for the Rio das Pedras community, this project will inform future large scale data collection on health, mobility, and the microbiome in informal communities, which globally, house more than one billion people.
Collecting firsthand data in an unmapped community
The initial phases of the project involved planning out participant recruitment and data collection via interviews, collection of water and saliva samples, and GPS based mobility monitoring, to be followed by linkage to data on neighborhood environmental conditions in Rio das Pedras. Our usual approach to describing neighborhood built, social and environmental conditions is to use GIS tools and governmental administrative data or commercially sourced data, however such data are not available for Rio das Pedras. Another approach we take to gather data on neighborhood conditions is to conduct Virtual Street Audits (also called Systematic Social Observation) using Google Street View and our CANVAS tool. Unfortunately, Google Street View is not available for most streets and alleyways in Rio das Pedras.
It quickly became clear that we would need to conduct our own field studies to collect data and photos to support our understanding and documentation of the built environment. It was also clear that we needed a tool to collect neighborhood audit data, to organize field notes, a way to geotag photos and way to provide our field team with maps to navigate the neighborhoods in a community that lacked formal street names and house numbering systems.
Discovering Fulcrum
Fulcrum is a mobile data collection platform that allows users to build, deploy, & collect data with their own customized apps – Available on iOS & Android.
After coming across a CARTO blogpost about using Fulcrum, I realized that Fulcrum might provide a single digital solution for our field research needs. We developed a custom form to help collect data on neighborhood conditions and health using the Fulcrum App interface. This tool enabled the team to systematically collect field data, in-person without using paper, pen and clipboards.
BEH Systematic Social Observation form on the Fulcrum App for iPhone
We piloted the test app for data collection in March 2015. Based on our experience from March, we were able to create a new modified Fulcrum App and also add our own Map Layers. The team returned to the field again early this May for a more exhaustive and complete round of data collection.
Notes from the field
Project Coordinator, Garazi Zulaika:
Fulcrum greatly facilitated data collection in the field. Fulcrum’s fast synchronization allowed us to communicate in real time and field test our data collection questions with collaborators in different countries. Fulcrum’s ability to store multiple entry points and photos allowed us to collect data throughout the entire day without accessing internet in the field.
Another valuable feature of Fulcrum was its ability to pan away from the GPS location set by the device. Our data collection takes place in a densely populated informal community, where poor satellite reception affects GPS accuracy. Informal construction methods interfere with signal reception, making precise location tracking difficult in certain areas. Adjusting recorded coordinates by a block or street improved accuracy when the GPS assigned an incorrect location. Newer mobile devices provided more precise GPS locations, while older devices struggled to identify the user’s position correctly.
The platform’s user-friendly design let our research team customize questions to fit our specific needs during data collection. We incorporated context-specific questions, modified answer categories, and added or deleted items as necessary. The app allowed us to edit responses even after completing an entry, improving data accuracy. It did not force us to answer questions in order, which made data entry more efficient. As we moved through the informal community, we logged form items whenever we encountered them. Fulcrum’s flexibility helped us collect data quickly and efficiently in challenging field conditions. I look forward to using it again!
Geotagged images from the field
Sewer pipes in Rio das Pedras geotagged photo via the Fulcrum app
Avenida Canal in Rio das Pedras geotagged photo via the Fulcrum app
Parting note
Working with the Fulcrum platform and getting support from the Fulcrum team has greatly enhanced our data collection capabilities. We hope to provide a future blogpost as follow-up to our second field data collection effort.