Exploring Perceptions of Structural Racism to see how it contributes to climate and its influence on respiratory diseases through 3D Visualizations
Rhia Kumar, Stony Brook University
Week 1:
Before the internship began, there was a social gathering at Bowlero to facilitate introductions with our peers and Dr. Wole. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the memo and ended up missing out on my initial opportunity to connect with my fellow interns. The next day, I had the opportunity to meet with my peers and Dr. Wole. We explored Hunter College and concluded the day by connecting with our mentors. I scheduled an individual session with my mentor(s) to delve into the potential structure of my project. I started examining the relationship between housing valuations and climate, considering them as pivotal elements for my research. Additionally, I initiated a review of literature focusing on structural racism and its historical visualization to enrich my understanding. Navigating the various directions for my project left me feeling slightly overwhelmed. During the remainder of the week, I completed my project proposal, delineating its distinctiveness. We concluded the week by familiarizing ourselves with Paraview and delivering our project proposals.
Week 2:
The week began with an introduction to the fundamental principles of writing a scientific research paper and familiarized us with Overleaf for composing our documents. Additionally, Professor Wole conducted VR lectures on immersive visual and interactive displays, alongside 3D geometry. Following that, the next day I had a meeting with Dr. Wole, Professor Cogburn, and Lisa on exactly the next steps moving forward and what I should have accomplished by the end of the week. We decided it was best to explore the visualization tools further and begin data collection to find specific years that I should specifically analyze. Out of all the tools, I definitely think mapbox and unity does seem the most feasible. Additionally, they mentioned after I had done this, beginning next week my implementation of VR in my research would be discussed and further finalized.
Professor Wole then took the time to go over everyone’s technical implementations and progress with their research. I took this time to download unity and integrate mapbox. I began to watch videos on how to use Mapbox, so I can familiarize myself. It didn’t go that well, but I continued my literature review. I was able to add my introduction and related works section to overleaf.
Thursday was where I felt extremely overwhelmed. As I was in the midst of collecting data from the online data portal relating to climate, specifically heat index, and health (particularly asthma related ed visits), I came across several roadblocks. All the portals with access to this data were prohibiting me to analyze data of heat index over particular years, rather it would just say ” heat index of 1 out of 5″ for x neighborhood or it gave data only for one particular year (2018). However, I was able to find data on heat events, which is where the most people die due to extreme heat than all other extreme weather events combined. According to the portal, 100-degree days are a significant heat event, so I was able to compile data on heat events citywide, yet again I ran across the issue of finding specific data for the two neighborhoods (Riverdale and Soundview). Hence, I then zoomed into the two historically redlined areas for asthma-related visits because it is seen that these heat events exacerbate asthma. I decided to look at asthma-related visits because once someone has asthma, they always have it.
We ended the week exploring Tableau, which I found to be very interesting. We created GitHub ID’s, where we then updated our to-dos, in progress, and done sections in relation to our projects. Subsequently, everyone gave Dr. Wole updates on our projects, and I was able to express what errors I came across the day prior with data collection. He advised that maybe if there is data on specific boroughs, I can use those as comparison instead of two specific neighborhoods. We ended the day with a chance to look into the virtual reality headsets, which was so darn cool!
Here is the data I collected on Thursday, but will need to be updated as per Dr. Wole:
Week #3:
This week started with Professor Wole’s lecture on immersion, presence, and reality, along with 3D tracking, scanning, and animation. We then watched a behind-the-scenes video for the Avatar movie, which I found really fascinating. I continued exploring different functions in Mapbox Studio and tried to follow a game-building tutorial on YouTube by Mapbox. I ran into compilation errors in Unity that prevented me from entering play mode and constructing maps. Lisa suggested a solution: after creating the Unity app, import everything for Mapbox SDK except GoogleArCore, MapBox AR, and UnityARInterface. This worked!
The next day, I created two demo models for the neighborhoods I’m examining, Riverdale and Soundview, but hit a roadblock. Every time I try to import my maps into Unity, I get the error “Transform tile provider – no location marker specified.” In a one-on-one meeting with Lisa, she mentioned she would contact someone who might know the solution. We also discussed future steps and potential questions for my user study, which I wrote down based on Lisa’s advice. We ended the week by exploring the VMD Interface and updating GitHub with our project progress.
Attached below are my two demo models I created:
Week 4:
The week began with Dr. Wole covering the topics “3D Tracking, Scanning and Animation” and “Interaction and Input Devices” in his lectures. I spent some time experimenting with Mapbox and Unity but soon felt frustrated as nothing seemed to be working. The following day, I reached out to Richard Yeung for help, knowing he had experience with Mapbox and Unity. He resolved my initial error, but I encountered a new problem: every time I imported my map into Unity, it displayed as a black map. Richard suggested I review the tutorials again, but this did not resolve the issue.
The next day, I met with my mentors, who advised me to temporarily set Unity aside and focus on working with my maps. I also discussed my challenges with climate (heat index) data with Professor Cogburn. Despite lacking disaggregated data, she noted that I knew Riverdale had a heat index of 1 out of 5 compared to Soundview’s 4 out of 5. We also talked about my upcoming midterm presentation and how to address my progress despite the setbacks.
The next day, I prepared my presentation, creating various maps to highlight the underlying inequities due to asthma prevalence in two neighborhoods. These maps included factors such as air quality, housing conditions, and green spaces. I also illustrated socioeconomic status by showing income levels and access to healthcare facilities. Additionally, I compiled some data into a spreadsheet to quantify my findings. The week concluded with my midterm presentation, during which I received feedback from Dr. Wole.
Attached below are my data spreadsheet and some maps I created:
Week 5:
The week started with Dr. Wole going through his lecture on “Introduction to GPU’s”, which I found to be quite interesting for anyone that has a passion for possibly building their own one day. The next day, I felt slightly behind in terms of updating my paper so I took the time to add/change/edit all of my previous work because I did make some changes to the format of my maps. I still am having issues with Unity and Dr. Wole mentioned that if the issue persists, I will have to end up leaving my maps on Mapbox. After, we went over Dr. Wole’s other lecture on “Immersive Audio”. Additionally, Lisa gave me the following suggestions for my maps: May need to change up visualizing roads and highways, socioeconomic maps, and definitely the access to healthcare (potential extrusions or reducing green space colors for non-green space maps so that map highlights highways and access to healthcare symbols).” Thus, I took the initiative to fix my roads and highways map that day by breaking up the different types of roads nearby instead of just classifying all black lines as roads/highways. Thursday was Fourth of July, so I took the day to myself and went to the beach to enjoy the fireworks show with my friends. On Friday, we had a self paced Graph/Network Visualization with Gephi and did a weekly update with Dr. Wole. Along with that, I fixed my access to healthcare map as per Lisa’s suggestions. Lastly, the week ended with a social outing on a lunch cruise with my peers, which was very much enjoyable and nice to hangout with the group!
Attached below is some of the maps I updated:
Week 6:
This week began without any in-person meetings, which allowed me to connect with Lisa for a much-needed catch-up session. We focused on addressing issues in two out of my five models and collaborated on refining potential survey questions. Lisa shared her survey as a helpful template for me to structure my own. We wrapped up by scheduling our next meeting and setting a goal to finalize my survey for her review and potential distribution by the weekend. The following day, I continued to diligently work on refining the remaining models. Midweek, I found Dr. Wole’s lecture on perception, VR sickness, and latency to be particularly fascinating and insightful. Later in the week, I took Lisa’s feedback to heart and iteratively improved my survey structure. My aim was to present a polished version to Dr. Wole by Monday, ensuring it was ready for data collection. As the week drew to a close, I dedicated time to reviewing articles for SIGGRAPH Asia.
Attached below is sample questions from my survey:
Week 7:
The week started by reviewing the SIGGRAPH Asia feedback from the previous week. We also held our weekly check-in meeting, which was rescheduled because we missed it last Friday. At the end of the day, I sought feedback from Dr. Wole on my survey before distributing it. He suggested modifying my last question from a checkbox grid to a multiple-choice grid. The following day, I focused on sending out my survey to various individuals and servers to gather as many responses as possible. On Wednesday, I took some personal time to enjoy a fun outing with friends in the city. The next day, we had an enlightening field trip to the ASRC, where I learned a lot of new things and got to test-run Cason’s fascinating project. The week concluded with an unexpected family emergency, which prevented me from attending the meeting in person. However, I used this time to make updates to my paper and began working on the data analysis section.
Week 8:
The last and final week was finally here! This was an intense and overwhelming experience, but I’m thrilled to say I made it through! The journey was short yet challenging, with moments where I felt uncertain about the project’s direction. The week began with a Zoom meeting to discuss SIGGRAPH Asia logistics. Following that, I dedicated time to analyzing my results and writing the final sections of my paper. The next day, I focused on refining my paper by enhancing the discussions and conclusions. Wednesday was entirely consumed by a comprehensive teacher MoCap session, which was both exhausting and incredibly insightful. Afterward, I returned home to prepare for my presentation by building upon my midterm presentation. Before I knew it, the final day arrived. I completed a post-program survey, added references to my paper, and submitted it to the competition. I am so grateful for all the experiences made over these last eight weeks and couldn’t be more thankful for meeting such a wonderful group of people!
Hunter College
City University of New York
HN-1001T
695 Park Ave
New York, NY 10065
Telephone: +1 (212) 396-6837
Email: oo700 at hunter dot cuny dot edu
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