The researchers, led through the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), were working with citizens of Morro do Preventio in Brazil and El Pacafico in Colombia to gather real-time local knowledge from citizens about the dangers of fatal landslides. Their purpose was to mobilize these communities to paint together, by building teams to gather knowledge and empower others to protect themselves from disasters.
When it hit COVID-19, which disproportionately affected less prosperous urban spaces like these, researchers and network leaders temporarily agreed to adapt the immediate target of the landslide threat assignment to those caused by the pandemic.
Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the pandemic, and its serious socio-economic and fitness consequences have been left to feel strongly through others living in poor urban neighborhoods.
The team has adapted their original strategies to equip local leaders and citizens with the means to organize assistance to those who wish to do so.
The knowledge they now gather focuses on the need for food packages, for the safe disposal of waste, for the provision of physical care, as well as for the distribution of national social security credits that can keep families afloat and the fragile local economy.
Researchers use high-resolution satellite photographs of the area, along with network members, to produce detailed maps of residential spaces that are invisible on official maps, and to mark photographs with real-time knowledge about where neighbors want maximum special support. For example, express problems where waste accumulates or where other remote people want food.
Detailed maps of network movements in reaction to the pandemic crisis, which have so far resulted in the distribution of more than 1,700 food packages to citizens of the neighborhoods of spouses near Rio de Janeiro/Brazil.
The task is funded through the UK Global Research And Innovation Challenges Fund and is URBE Latam.
Morro do Preventio and El Pacafico are known as “casual” institutions: their citizens do not have safe jobs and are forgotten through national social security policies and infrastructure plans. Residents used to paint in the informal economy and therefore saw their livelihoods suddenly being interrupted by the COVID-19 crisis and the resulting social isolation measures.
One of the main objectives of the studies is to involve all members of these invisible and vulnerable neighborhoods, running with them to design new tactics to mix their existing local wisdom with fashion knowledge and virtual generation with each other and mitigate the effects of poverty or disasters.
This was expected to make spouse communities not only more resilient to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and similar social inequalities, but also be more visual for national policy makers and governments. In fact, researchers plan to contact the government and national agencies to obtain percentage data from citizens, thus creating a lasting link between central government and local citizens.
Professor Joo Porto de Albuquerque, principal investigator and director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, commented:
“The assignment of GCRF URBE Latam has consisted of working with local citizens who have little economic strength but a lot of local wisdom, devising equipment so that they can use this wisdom to protect themselves from threats and make sure they are noticed and heard. through the national government. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated the serious economic inequalities that already existed in these invisible communities that have evolved outside accelerated urbanization and have long been ignored by policymakers. Our strategies and objectives in reaction to a rapidly converting the pandemic, the core of the task remains the same. Effective knowledge collection can improve, or even save, short-term lives; and by encouraging citizens to paint and be informed in combination and continue to accumulate knowledge, I believe that in the long run, these communities will become more economically resilient.”
The Morro do Preventio project, a domain of favelas near Rio de Janeiro, is founded on a close collaboration with the “network bank” in the region, a social organization that provides network assistance, provides microcredits and manages a local social program. (called Prevo) that’s the economy of the region. The latter is important because many poorer citizens do not have access to the national government’s COVID-19 monetary programs.
Researchers have developed tactics to collect and exploit local resident data and pass it all to the “community bank,” allowing local organizers to more quickly and successfully paint the lives of their neighbors.
Marcos Rodrigo Ferreira, who is the volunteer coordinator of the Preventive Community Bank and researcher of the GCRC URBE Latam commented:
“I was born and raised in a network of favelas and I know very well the importance of solidarity and collaboration. Our efforts to resilience the network to the pandemic have benefited greatly from a discussion with the spouses assigned to URBE Latam, exchanging and learning in combination with our universities and foreign spouse communities in Colombia and the United Kingdom. This collaboration allows us to think of new tactics to generate knowledge that can help us assist the poorest and provide evidence to advocate for resolution initiatives.”
Professor Henrique Cukierman of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), who leads in Brazil, commented:
We have created a ‘Solidarity Committee’ composed of 60 leaders from favela communities, one hundred volunteers from local universities, social organizations and NGOs. who was hungry but couldn’t buy food. We paint and search in combination so that these mobilization networked paintings can be backed up to improve the resilience of networked paints in the long term. “
In Colombia, the El Pacífico district in Medellin has succeeded in implementing networked movements to mitigate life-related threats on the city’s outlying slopes and its geophysical threats. Among the experiments conducted to alleviate these problems, the network has a history of mobilizing state-of-the-art networks through a “threat management network school”, developed with local partners such as the College major of the University of Antioquia and other social organizations. However, these practices have never taken into account the option of a fitness crisis such as that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Luis Alejandro Rivera, who is a member of the URBE Latam team, and has been running with the El Pac-fico network since 2017, commented: