Brazil's biggest favela has been mapped using 3D laser scanning. It’s important not just for technology, but also for human rights

Brazil’s biggest favela – the local word for an unplanned and deprived settlement on the edge of a city – has been mapped using 3D technology.

Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro is one of many favelas to have grown up around cities in Brazil. Favelas are typically highly populated and too heavily packed with homes to be analyzed by traditional technology such as satellite mapping.

But researchers in Rocinha, which has around 100,000 residents, got around this problem by using handheld 3D scanners.

The researchers are from the MIT Senseable City Lab, a research group exploring cities and emerging technologies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

In a project called Favelas 4D, the scientists have created a virtual model of Rocinha using 3D laser scanning technology called LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging.

LiDAR works by sending out pulses of infrared light and measuring how long it takes for these to bounce off objects. This creates a map of the surroundings in 3D points.

“Around 300,000 data points are generated every second,” says an article about the project in MIT Technology Review. Researchers navigated “narrow alleys and sloping hills” to capture the 1.5-square-kilometer neighbourhood, the authors said.

The project is led by Italian architect Carlo Ratti, who directs the MIT Senseable City Lab, in collaboration with Rio de Janeiro’s city planning commissioner, Washington Fajardo.

The Favelas 4D team notes that almost 1 billion people live in informal settlements around the world. Not being able to map these communities makes them invisible – despite their huge size – and “devoid of urban rights”.

For example, such areas may not have access to formal aid, administration or economic opportunities. Favela residents also face unhealthy living conditions and have lower life expectancies, the MIT researchers say.

The researchers hope their map of Rocinha might lead to improvements, such as with access to public services like water and waste collection. Living conditions could be improved through urban design changes, like removing structures to let in more light or air.

Favela residents have already developed some clever building systems that could inform future urban design, Ratti tells online architecture and design magazine Dezeen.

Carlo Ratti is also a Top Innovator on UpLink – a digital platform launched by the World Economic Forum, Deloitte and Salesforce to crowdsource innovative solutions to the world’s biggest problems – and is co-chair of the Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow. This is focused on ensuring that cities can “build back better” after the pandemic, so they’re liveable, sustainable, affordable and resilient to climate change.