Your research question is quite interesting. However, putting in too many ideas together may lead to complication that hinder you to see the whole picture.

What I can understand from your question is that you would like to measure three variables: urbanization, health risk caused by diarrheal, and environmental degradation.

In terms of urbanization, it is the number of population living in urban area. This figure can be obtained from most of the statistics department. The slum population can be obtained by identifying all the slum areas in or surrounding the cities and the percentage of population living in those areas.

To study how the rate of urbanization contributes to the increasing of slum, you may need to obtain the time series of urban population in one area, let say 10 years, and compare how the urban population has been growing within this 10 years period. By doing so, you can also know how many percent of population living in those slum areas located within and surrounding the city.

In terms of health risk caused by diarrheal, the access to clean water supply is a good indication. Since the most common cause of diarrheal is an infection of the intestines due to either a virus, bacteria, or parasite, as a result of accessing food or water that has been contaminated, people living in areas without water supply may have high tendency to be infected. In this case, you may get the proxy of diarrheal health risk by knowing the percentage of urban population with no access to water supply.

In terms of environmental degradation in slum area, you may need to obtain the water quality data from the environmental department. You may need to identify where the water resources of this slum population are, and to check whether these resources fall under Class A, Class B, or Class C with regard to World Heath Organization drinking water quality standard.    

As a conclusion, when you try to analyse your research question separately, you can easily obtain the data that you want from published document. Otherwise, you may need to conduct primary data collection by your own, in which is costly and time consuming.    

Your research question is quite interesting. However, putting in too many ideas together may lead to complication that hinder you to see the whole picture.

What I can understand from your question is that you would like to measure three variables: urbanization, health risk caused by diarrheal, and environmental degradation.

In terms of urbanization, it is the number of population living in urban area. This figure can be obtained from most of the statistics department. The slum population can be obtained by identifying all the slum areas in or surrounding the cities and the percentage of population living in those areas.

To study how the rate of urbanization contributes to the increasing of slum, you may need to obtain the time series of urban population in one area, let say 10 years, and compare how the urban population has been growing within this 10 years period. By doing so, you can also know how many percent of population living in those slum areas located within and surrounding the city.

In terms of health risk caused by diarrheal, the access to clean water supply is a good indication. Since the most common cause of diarrheal is an infection of the intestines due to either a virus, bacteria, or parasite, as a result of accessing food or water that has been contaminated, people living in areas without water supply may have high tendency to be infected. In this case, you may get the proxy of diarrheal health risk by knowing the percentage of urban population with no access to water supply.

In terms of environmental degradation in slum area, you may need to obtain the water quality data from the environmental department. You may need to identify where the water resources of this slum population are, and to check whether these resources fall under Class A, Class B, or Class C with regard to World Heath Organization drinking water quality standard.    

As a conclusion, when you try to analyse your research question separately, you can easily obtain the data that you want from published document. Otherwise, you may need to conduct primary data collection by your own, in which is costly and time consuming.    

Some ideas are:

You can do a comparison between two years for example 1950-2000 based on aereal photographs or demographic information. Then you can extract the constructed areas or occupied slum areas like Chee hung Foo said.

Complementing the information, I think you can use other indicators like quantity of water treatment plants, waste water treatment rate, the comsumntion rate of fresh water by population, qty. of hospitals or another sanitary facilities, qty. of public spaces and stimated areas, qty. of produced wastes and its facilities, the birth rate and mortality rate to calculate the estimated population in the future, qty. of green areas (natural or protected areas), you can also calculated an estimation of costs and compare it.

Urbanization: some variables you can use are: developed areas, qty of buildings, qty of streets (by type, long. and areas), population, green areas felled.

Health: all mentioned above and another you think can be usefull.

Environmental degradation: green areas felled, ecosystems afected, polluted areas, waste production rate and tratement, number of people affected with diseases, air, water ond soil quality (cuantitative and qualitative).

There are too many variables you can use, depend of your time and goals.

Hina,

your question is general in nature. Factors for Development of slum or rate of increase in the slum area vary from place to place. It depends on the inter-relationship of historical, economic, social and political forces along with the backdrop of physical environment. You first identify these forces for your study area. then you yourself will be able to identify the variables to be measured. Suppose in Kolkata slums have been developed due to partition in 1947, Bangladesh war in 1971, labour migration from other E'n Indian states, gap in the economic status, over population, lack of education, low skill development, low wage, high land and real estate price in the city etc. etc. etc.

Every factor has many variables to be measured. The selection will depend on your objective.

For Health risk  you can consider, source of drinking water, domestic water, sanitation and regular / storm water drainage mechanism, nutrition level, income level, occupational hazard and last but not the least education and awareness level. 

Regards

Sarada

Dear Friend,

your queries are very interesting.

1.      Urbanization  could be measured as the percent of urban population to total population i. e. level of urbanization (LU). Rapid urban growth leads to haphazard slum growth and it is an integral part of urban area. Since, you are interested to study slum growth due to urbanization, you have to have time series data for slum as well as non-slum areas (total urban - slum= non-slum). And simply compute the decadal growth rate for both the areas and see the changes.  You could also use correlation analysis to see the interdependence among slum growth and other socioeconomic indicators (urban growth rate, literacy rate, sex ration, Work Participation Rate-male/female, share of SC/STs population among others). [see this paper........http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2010_45/41/Declining_Number_of_Slums_Nature_of_Urban_Growth.pdf].   

2.      For health  risk assessment you should examine the prevalence, access and availability of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for both slum and non- slum and compare this. Quality of water, sanitation and hygiene are most crucial in this respect.  

 1. increasing rate of slums due to rapid urbanization.

Ans: Option 1: Measure slum growth time series satellite imageries using GIS methodologies (5 year period for observing good difference)

Option 2: Visit Katchi Abadis Authorities for estimated data of growth of slum example Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority,  Study Katchi Abadis Act of Provinces like Punjab Katchi Abadi Act of 1992 for classifying what is slum and what is not (see international literature as well)

2. increasing slums causing environmental degradation leading to health risks

Option 1: Related to GIS. Measure distances of slum settlements and nearest open spaces (environmental degradation) and medical centres (health risk). Compare standards needed for assessing risk. You can use National Reference Manual of Pakistan 1982 for checking required number of medical facilities per 1 million population. 

Option 2: Correlate data from Govt with actual socioeconomic situation collected through questionnaires. Check whether they have health issues or not. If they have check can they afford it or not. Use regression for identifying factors influencing health risks.

Last option : Use this paper's methodology for health risk assessment in context of slums.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211692314000447

Hope this helps.. Good Luck!

 Hello,

As it was already mentioned, quantitative data plays crucial role to observe the changes in development of urban areas/squatters. If you have no chance to contact with the institute of statistics and/or urban development agencies, questionnaires can be helpful. Aereal photos, sattlelite images/maps in time series can be other useful reference materials. However, the urbanization trends of a given settlement will provide guidance to determine the period of the study, e.g. 2 year period or 5 year period of observation might lead the different results to interprete the increasing rate of slum areas.

Good luck,

Ebru

Hello,

Also you can use medical records to get the number of patients from the slums who were diagnosed with water bone diseases. This can also be time series and the results can be compared with spatial analysis results.

All the best,

Nestory  

too  much confusing

I think that it is an interesting and useful question. Urbanization can be measured by the dynamics of city growth. Just take time series for its population, then find % of increase across years.

There should be statistics for particular diseases per 1000 inhabitants. Look also at its dynamics.

Finally, you need some measure for slums. Of course, it is a fuzzy variable, because some housing is at the border between slums and not-slums. You might think about some threshold in housing price. For example, what has the price below $10,000 is a slum.

If a city has a clear division into districts and it is known in which slums dominate, then you can compare statistics for income and diseases across those districts. This spatial analysis can complement dynamics.

First of all, I think the answer of Chee hung Foo is the most useful up to now. Especially his ideas on the measurement of urbanization, Slum growth and ecological impact seem very do-able and meaningful. 

Second of all, I think your main problem is getting good data on health and disease. If you do not get meaningful data, it might be a good idea to leave it out for the moment and focus on water quality. You can discuss the impact on health, but you do not need to tie your results to this relationship. You can run some preliminary statistics with mortality rates and/or life expectancy as a stopgap argument.

Good topic ....yes I have also done a paper exactly related to what you want to do. I have tried to relate ...whether with increasing urbanization slums are growing or not. And for that I computed the population growth rate of  urban and slum population in India. The result was positively associated with each other.

Secondly, regarding your second question that how increasing slum causing environmental degradation. This could be achieved...if you have data related to were the percentage of slums situated (e.g. near stagnant water or polluted area), % accessing safe drinking water, toilet facility, percent using type of fuel (Biomass, kerosene....etc). Type of kitchen (within household without separate room). This indicators will help you analyse and link with those who are suffering with T.B. or diarrhea.

You can use the historical maps stored at GoogleEarth.

In general, the best way to study slums is to work on the ground by carrying out a survey.

Best wishes