1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

The new coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2), responsible for the disease COVID-19, was initially detected in China after the identification of numerous and unusual cases of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan (Belforte et al., 2020). The identification of a new coronavirus occurred in January 2020, and a pandemic was declared on March 11 by the World Health Organization (WHO), based on the detection of the disease in different continents of the world.

Exactly one year after the pandemic was declared, there are more than 115 million accumulated cases of COVID-19 in the world, with more than 2.6 million deaths (Our World in Data, 2021), which characterizes the serious public health problem that humanity is experiencing. Brazil has the second-highest number of accumulated deaths globally, second only to the United States, totaling more than 11.12 million cases and more than 260 thousand deaths by COVID-19.

In Brazil, the first confirmed case of the disease occurred on February 26, in the city of São Paulo, which is the largest city in the country and is part of the metropolitan region that has the primary airline hub in South America (Aguiar, 2020), being an important pathway across Brazilian cities and the rest of the world. This is a relevant point to understand the spread of the pandemic and its important space-time component. As said by Sposito & Guimarães,

“(…) circulation and connectivity between different places are just as important as the territoriallocationintheprocessofspatialdiffusionofphenomenaofallkinds,showing the relevance of Milton Santos' theory, for which space is an inseparable set of action systemsandobjectsystems1” (Sposito & Guimarães, 2020, ¶5).

1 The original text was translated from Portuguese by the author and can be read at <https://www2.unesp.br/portal#!/noticia/35626/por-que-a-circulacao-de-pessoas-tem-peso-na-difusao-dapandemia>. Retrieved November 06, 2020.

In the second-largest city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, the first registration of COVID-19 took place on March 5. The state of Rio de Janeiro's first death was a 63-year-old woman, on March 17, in the municipality of Miguel Pereira, who contracted the disease in the city of Rio de Janeiro due to her work activity. In the present day (March 11, 2021), the city of Rio de Janeiro has reached more than 210 thousand accumulative cases of the disease and 19 thousand deaths (Ministério da Saúde2 , 2021), which would place the city, if it was a country, in the 25th position of deaths registered by countries due to the pandemic in the world (Worldometer, 2021).

The city's demographic conditions impact the way the pandemic spreads and is combated. There is a predominance of inadequate housing conditions in the city (slums, known as favelas), in which there is a lack of basic sanitation and health resources, and a high concentration of people, which favors non-compliance with disease prevention measures. These conditions facilitate contagion and increase the risk of death caused by the disease (Cobre et al., 2020).

From March 12, 2020, the day after the disease was classified as a pandemic by WHO, the mayor of the city began issuing decrees3 in response to the pandemic, such as social isolation and quarantine measures, formalizing remote work, closure of non-essential services, restriction of people in public transport services, suspension of school activities, among others.

These measures have been made more flexible over the months, with no clear guidelines to be followed or effective coordination between different government levels (municipal, state, and federal). Thus, these measures were not enough to stop the spread of the disease, given that the city of Rio de Janeiro ranks 5th in the highest mortality rates due to the disease in the country (more than 9%) (AUDITASUS, 2021), being the first city among Brazilian capitals. Additionally, there is a high occupancy rate of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 (surpassing 90% in some moments of the pandemic) with the establishment of hospital waiting lines for those seeking treatment for the disease.

2 Ministry of Health in Brazil.

3 Municipal decrees on COVID-19: <https://pge.rj.gov.br/covid19/municipal/decretos#:~:text=DECRETO%20RIO%20Nº%2047429%20DE,19%2 C%20e%20dá%20outras%20providências>. Retrieved January 28, 2021.

In Brazil, the pandemic was initially felt by the wealthier classes, who brought the virus when returning to the country from trips abroad, mainly from Europe. The country, a peripheral economy, initially watched the development of the pandemic and other nations' governments’ decisions as an onlooker who would only really experience the virus's devastating effects many weeks after the leading global economies.

In March, at the beginning of the pandemic, not much was known about its real effects on the global economy and people's lives, whether in terms of impacts on prices related to consumption and the availability of products, such as food, hygiene products, hospital products, among others, or even about the preservation of jobs and the upkeep of the purchasing power of families. Besides, it was not clear yet how fast people would be infected by the virus around the world and how much time the virus would be active in society, as well as how long it would take to come up with a solution to fight the disease, via drugs or vaccines. In this uncertain scenario, the most effective actions adopted to contain the pandemic were social isolation and mass testing.

The spatialization of the cases responds in an integrated way to the spatial question, where the infected people are, as well as to monitor their temporal spread. Therefore, several initiatives to visualize the pandemic in space-time began to emerge since the virus is quite contagious and further driven by the intense flows of people between the world's countries. The importance of the spatial component for its understanding was realized.

Thus, this study aims to use the data produced from an online survey that was carried out at the beginning of the pandemic via social media that aimed to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools in a collaborative mapping to understand the dynamics and impacts of the disease in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The questionnaire developed addresses a variety of aspects drawn upon people's perception of the pandemic. Finally, other data produced in different databases related to the evolution of the pandemic in Rio de Janeiro will be presented to evaluate the strength of the tool and complement the spatial information presented.

1.2 OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 GENERAL OBJECTIVE

Identify and quantify impacts, such as economic, social, and psychological impacts endured by the population of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after the arrival of COVID-19 until May 2020.

1.2.2 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

1. Analyze the results from the collaborative mapping on COVID-19 carried out between April 7 and May 11, 2020, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

2. Relate the data obtained in the collaborative mapping to the disease's official data and demographic data by planning regions of the city.

3. Verify interest to words associated with the pandemic on the internet, and that may be related to the data obtained in the collaborative mapping.

1.2.3 RESEARCH QUESTION

Some research questions guided the present investigation, as can be seen below:

• Do the results reflect the impacts felt by the population as a result of the pandemic?

• Do the results reflect people's interest in certain words related to the pandemic on Internet research?

The research questions will be answered, as far as possible, based on the procedures adopted to achieve the objectives.

1.2 HYPOTHESIS

The hypothesis is that there is evidence that the pandemic of the new coronavirus caused social, economic, and psychological impacts on the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro that can be verified in collaborative mapping.

1.3JUSTIFICATION

The new coronavirus SARS-Cov-2, responsible for the disease COVID-19, was initially detected in China. Being declared a pandemic caused by the virus in March 2020, it was observed, at that time, that there was an effort to provide spatial information about the pandemic, but the main focus was essentially on the number of contagions and deaths related to the disease in a given location. This information, while extremely important, didn't reveal much about how people were navigating the pandemic, how they felt, and the impact of the disease on their lives, other than the impact of the disease itself.

However, during the onset of COVID-19 cases in Brazil, a platform to monitor the impacts of the pandemic on people's daily lives was not established, since the main focus was on monitoring the number of contaminated and deaths over time in different locations where the virus was present.

The use of geotechnologies in this scenario, besides generating the necessary information to understand the development of the pandemic and its impacts, can also support the decisions of public managers and civil society entities in facing the consequences of the disease, as one of the keys to coping with the pandemic is the generation of information (Franch-Pardo et al., 2020).

Social inequalities mark the city of Rio de Janeiro. About 19.28% of households in Rio de Janeiro are located in slums (the favelas), called subnormal agglomerations (IBGE, 2019). This refers to the fact that the disease affects each location differently, considering sanitation conditions and access to drinking water, housing, air, and soil pollution (MundoGEO, 2020a). Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic accentuate the inequality in Brazil and, in the case of this study, in Rio de Janeiro The study of data produced at the beginning of the pandemic, in addition to the analysis of spatial information developed for the city since then, is relevant to understand the spatial dynamics of COVID-19 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, especially in understanding the socioeconomic and psychological impacts experienced by the population.

With this concern, an online survey was developed using GIS resources, such as Survey123 Connect, ArcGIS Online, Story Map and Dashboard for ArcGIS. This research aimed to gather information perceived by the general population related to the pandemic.

Thus, in the span of year of research, what is intended in this study is to analyze the data obtained in the survey, performing the necessary segmentation and treatments to understand the results of this research. It is also intended to verify what types of spatial information data were produced concerning COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro's municipality since a year has passed from the pandemic's announcement. These two pieces of information will be evaluated together, as one can complement the other.

The analysis of this information is relevant for public managers' decision-making, for the development of public policies counteracting the impacts felt by the population as a result of the pandemic, and bringing transparency to the different civil society actors (Cardoso et al., 2020).

1.5 SCOPE

This study's scope is to assess the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic perceived by the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by analyzing the data collected in a collaborative mapping carried out between April 7 and May 11, 2020. The research was launched via social media and contained 15 questions elaborated in Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS. The questions dealt with some demographic data, issues related to the activities and items affected by the pandemic, impacts related to mental health, and the interviewee's location.

Through these data, analyses and mappings will be produced to visualize the results in space according to the city's planning regions. In addition, in a complementary way, official data from COVID-19 and people's interest in the questionnaire's words was used.

The research did not propose to constitute a representative sample of Rio de Janeiro's population, with no control over the diversity of the constituted sample.

Besides being another source of information about the pandemic, bringing a different approach than the mapping initiatives presented at the beginning of the health emergency (focused more on the evolution of the number of cases and deaths of COVID-19 in different regions), the study is part of an initiative carried out in conjunction with a research group from a Rio de Janeiro university (LEGO - Laboratory of Geospatial Studies at Veiga de

Almeida University). Thus, it is expected that the content produced with the research will be used in other studies and serve as a basis for conducting new investigations and mapping regarding COVID-19 and its impacts.