Street Survey

Challenge:
Homelessness is prevalent in cities across the world. Gathering information from this population sometimes can be challenging, but it’s an important task. With more knowledge about the needs of the homeless, steps can be taken to address those needs through proper resources.

Solutions:

Infotech designed Street Survey, a digitized questionnaire application that gathers data from the homeless. This tablet-compatible app makes it easy for surveyors to instantly document their interviews with the homeless population as they go out into the field. The ultimate goal: to identify the individual needs of the homeless and provide them with resources to help get them off the streets.

Execution:

The Street Survey app is currently being used to interview homeless people in San Diego County and confidentially document their responses. Street Survey’s brief questionnaire, designed so that the subject does not lose interest, makes the app effective for data collection. The questions are carefully chosen to help identify the most vulnerable of the homeless population. This is accomplished through an algorithm which is able to compute a vulnerability score. This algorithm also helps to spot trends in homelessness and elicit appropriate actions to be taken to reverse these patterns.

Street Survey’s practical design provides an efficient way to obtain resourceful information and expose the needs of the homeless. This data collection can help dictate which resources are needed to make a positive impact on San Diego County’s homeless population.