A few days ago, USL partner, SATI Foundation, came up with the idea on how we could strategically prioritize the relief effort to help those in need and to work co-ordinately among several partners for the systematic and sanitized way to handout the supply for the vulnerable communities. Accordingly, the target groups we have been looking into for our COVID relief operation are the elders (age 70 and above) and the low-income households throughout Bangkok. . At a glance, the first map integrates the data set, sub-district scale, between areas of a higher proportion of elderly population and areas where low-income households make up higher than 3% within the sub-district. We came up with 3 groups of sub-district. The first group that needs attention the most are the sub-districts which have a substantial number of elders as well as a high proportion of low-income households such as Samae Dam, Tha Kham and Bang Khae. . Importantly, the next phase of analysis is to track harder-to-find data like the updated unemployment rate, homelessness, a migrant worker and develop them into the fine-grain sub-district data set for precise and comprehensive integrated analysis. The next map in the pipeline can be elder population and low-income household per sq.km, that will be more accurate to compare the concentration of the vulnerable sub-district by sub-district, for example, Pom Prap district has 3 of the top five sub-districts with high ageing population density per area in BMA. . The way we envision the logistic is that the local public health volunteer will come to the station one person at the time to pick up the supply. The nurse from the public health center can help us with an infrared thermometer to ascertain that the relief operation will not end up being the cause of the virus spread. We will try out the prototype system at FREC Bangkok, this, we will have the assistance from the public health office 20 and the local public health volunteers from 17 communities from Pom Prap district to manage the distribution of at least 170 supply set. If we live in an ideal world, we would like to develop an integrated mapping platform at the district level. . Above all, USL are extremely lucky that we have the perfect partners that can push the initiative forward, especially SATI Foundation with the strong connection to NGOs and volunteer groups, Scholars of Sustenance Thailand who has a systematic & high-standard food distribution system already, not to mention the connection to the corporate partners who are donating surplus food to them every day. Hitherto with the setup, we have come up, it should be easy to scale the operation or replicate it elsewhere. Hopefully, this will be one of the numerous additional initiatives to come to help us overcome this pandemic altogether. . Please join the relief effort Covid Relief Bangkok to learn more about the operation and help make it stronger. USL believes that through the values of Honesty, Empathy and Integrity we will make the difference. "We are all in this for the long haul...." #covidreliefbangkok #covidresponse #urbanstudieslab
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