NeighbourhoodWatchDocs Proposal

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PROPOSAL

POSTER

APPLICATION

RESEARCH PAPER

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Our project aims to make use of geospatial intelligence to explore the potential of allocating nearby doctors within estates to the residents, in particular the elderly to combat the issues of an ageing population.

PROJECT MOTIVATION

Between 2000 and 2018, Singapore’s population grew from 4.028 million to 5.791 million. However, the number of citizens aged 65 and above is increasing rapidly, as population growth slows. The size of this group of citizens grew by more than 2 times from 220,000 in year 2000 to 547,900 in year 2018, and is expected to increase even more by 2030. As the government look towards new ways in providing better social welfare, we aim to explore the possibility of allocating neighbourhood clinic doctors to nearby HDB blocks to ensure that those with mobility issues or disabilities receives adequate healthcare. With an increase in budget for healthcare infrastructure such as building at least one new hospital, for example, Sengkang General and Community Hospitals in 2018, Outram Community Hospital in 2020, Woodlands Health Campus in 2024, we aim to explore the possibility and feasibility of our project, providing an alternative plan.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Our goals are :

• To build a GIS tool (an R Shiny app)
• Analyse the demand and supply of clinics using the proximity of each clinic in residential zones
• Evaluate results of analysis and provide recommendations to further improve the social welfare for the residents who require special assistance

DATA COLLECTION

To achieve our project objectives, it is necessary for us to obtain the datasets that is available online for use. The following table depicts the list of datasets we require and how we can obtain them:

No.	Dataset	Description	Source(s)
1.	OSM Layer (Singapore)	This dataset is necessary for us to be able to plot the Singapore map.	OpenStreetMap
2.	Singapore Planning Subzone (MP14_SUBZONE_WEB_PL)	This dataset is necessary for us to be able to plot the Singapore map out at a planning subzone level.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/master-plan-2014-subzone-boundary-no-sea
3.	Estimated Singapore Resident Population in HDB Flats	Find out the number of residents per estate.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/estimated-resident-population-living-in-hdb-flats
4.	Dwelling Units under HDB's Management, by Town and Flat Type	Shows number of units per estate for each flat type.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/number-of-residential-units-under-hdb-s-management
5.	Residents by Age Group & Type of Dwelling, Annual	Shows age group and number of residents by type of dwelling.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/residents-by-age-group-type-of-dwelling-annual
6.	Singapore Residents by Subzone and Type of Dwelling, June 2017	This dataset is necessary for us to find out the total number of elderly population in a specific Subzone.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/singapore-residents-by-subzone-and-type-of-dwelling-jun-2017
7.	Singapore Residents by Subzone, Age Group and Sex, June 2017 (Gender)	This dataset is necessary for us to find out the total number of elderly population.	https://data.gov.sg/dataset/singapore-residents-by-subzone-age-group-and-sex-jun-2017-gender
8.	Total Number of Clinics in Singapore	This dataset is necessary for us to locate all the neighborhood clinics in Singapore and find out their respective addresses, so as to aid in our proximity analysis with the dwellings. As this data is not readily available to us, we will need to perform web scraping to "scrape" the data off the Singapore Healthcare Institutions Directory (HCI) website. A Python script can help us achieve the following and more details can be found below.	http://hcidirectory.sg/hcidirectory/
9.	Total Number of TCM Clinics in Singapore	This dataset is necessary for us to locate all the TCM Medical Centres in Singapore and find out their respective addresses, so as to aid in our proximity analysis with the dwellings. As this data is not readily available to us, we will need to perform web scraping to "scrape" the data off the Singapore Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Board (TCM Board) website. Code tweaks to the Python script used for the HCI website data will help us collect this dataset successfully.	https://prs.moh.gov.sg/prs/internet/profSearch/main.action?hpe=TCM

Code Snippet 1	Code Snippet 2

The code snippets above shows how we can perform web scraping using a Python script. The script mainly does the following in a nutshell:

1. Uses a set of pre-defined parameters and settings to visit through each page of the HCI's search results in a loop.
2. Make use of XPATH expressions to retrieve the content (healthcare facility name, address, postal code) located at specific HTML attributes.
3. When all pages are visited, the retrieved information will be parsed and stored into a .CSV file with the respective columns.

LITERATURE REVIEW & PROJECT APPROACH

Pattern Visualization

Firstly, we will establish the point locations of the residential areas as well as the clinics islandwide. This is to obtain spatial information at a glance about the elderly population within a certain area. We will be looking at values on a subzone level. Among the data, elderly population within the residential population needs to be clean and calculated first for a more accurate analysis.

Buffer Analysis

A buffer zone is any area that serves the purpose of keeping real world features distant from one another. For the purpose of our project, we could look at the buffer to be in terms of minutes of walk away from the elderly's blocks to the nearest clinics, instead of distance. With this, we can determine the catchment areas of existing clinics. This is by making clinics the centre of the circle to calculate the catchment area within a given radius. Users interacting with the map we created will select from a list of maximum allowable timing that the elderly is willing to commute to the nearest clinic, and that will be translated into distance for the purpose of buffer analysis.

Kernel Density Estimation

Determine the distribution of elderly within subzones and analyse the output in comparison with the number of nearby clinics.

PROJECT TIMELINE

STORYBOARD

Our team aims to create a dashboard that will display all the clinics (medical and TCM) across Singapore. We will also display dwellings in the respective subzones and the estimated number of elderly aged 65 and above staying there. Just the above will show the supply and demand for healthcare in clinics. Further analysis will be calculated on how the supply and demand are met, as well as to identify any potential gaps e.g. overdemand or oversupply of healthcare facilities in a particular subzone.

The supply and demand data for selected subzones will then be displayed on a data table for better visualization.

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

These are the tools and technology our team aims to explore and use through the period of the project to achieve our objectives. It will be updated as we go through the project.

PROJECT CHALLENGES

No.	Key Technical Challenges	Description	Proposed Solution	Outcome
1.	Unfamiliarity with R packages and R Shiny	Our team may encounter the use of additional R resources that were not taught in class.	- Independent Learning on R packages and R Shiny - Browsing the official RDocumentation website for support and reference - Research for online tutorials that have a specific use case for certain R packages	We managed to solve the mentioned challenge with the following resources: -
2.	Data Cleaning and Transformation	As we need to collect the data from various sources, they may have different attributes such as the Coordinate Reference System (CRS), units of measurement and etc.	Adopt a standardized process of cleaning the data, focusing with what we only need. Most of the datasets used for our project can be found in our Hands-On or Take-Home exercises and we can rely on those existing data.	We managed to solve our technical challenge with the following: -
3.	Limitations & Constraints in Datasets	There are certain assumptions that we need to make based on the context and purpose of our project, such as the average number of doctors in a particular clinic, which cannot be derived from our datasets.	Working out with the team together and figuring out a reasonable and valid assumption, together with adequate online research and consultation with Prof. Kam.	We managed to solve our technical challenge with the following: -