CAD-RUA

A shared case record for people living on the street, used by outreach teams, shelters and city coordination

Role: Project coordinator and architect
Period: Since April 2026
Funding: FAPERJ, Call 34/2025, Programa Prioridade Rio
Co-authors: Evolução Clínica e Consultoria and IPPPS
Status: The three tools work and were demonstrated with fictitious data

Illustration: a quiet town square at night, lit by street lamps — Illustrative scene. A square at night.

CAD-RUA puts the street outreach team, the shelters and the municipal coordination on the same case record. What an agent writes down on the sidewalk reaches the shelter's front desk before the person arrives. The project was selected and funded by FAPERJ, the Rio de Janeiro State research foundation, in a competitive public call. I was the project's coordinator and architect.

What CAD-RUA is

CAD-RUA is a case record and a shelter vacancy system for people experiencing homelessness. It has three tools. Outreach agents use the field app on their phones. Shelters, therapeutic communities and social hotels use Vacancy Management in the browser. The city coordination uses the Admin Panel, also in the browser.

Health posts and social assistance centers don't log in. They appear on the map inside the field app, so the agent knows where each service is before referring someone.

The problem

The street team wrote on paper forms. The shelter kept its own spreadsheet, and health services had a system of their own, so nobody saw the person's whole story.

Finding a bed was a phone job. The agent called shelter after shelter, often after midnight, while the person waited on the sidewalk. And whoever got a bed had to tell everything again at the front desk, because the notes from the street stayed with the street team.

My role

CAD-RUA was developed together with IPPPS and Evolução Clínica e Consultoria, and FAPERJ selected it to be developed under Call 34/2025, in the Programa Prioridade Rio. I have been the project's coordinator and architect since April 2026.

As architect, I decided that the three tools would share one database and that each profile would see only what its job requires. The schedule had six phases: foundation, field app, vacancy management, admin panel, integration and testing, and handover with the final technical report the call requires.

Three tools on one case record

Field App

Street team, on the phone

The home screen shows the day's outreach action and four shortcuts: Emergency, New Triage, Search Records and My Requests.
Triage takes four steps (identification, situation, assessment, summary) and only starts with the person's consent. Saving it opens the case record.
Searching a record works by name, social name or nickname. The file shows the last place of contact and the person's needs. It also lists past shelter stays and the service history.
The vacancy request lists only units with a free bed, with the number of beds in each, and has four priority levels. When a unit approves, the agent gets a notice with directions and a shortcut to call.
A map of public services (social assistance, health, food, legal aid) can be filtered by type.
Each agent has a personal login created by the city administration. The app needs an internet connection.

Field app: case record search by name — Record search. The social name appears before the civil name.

Vacancy Management

Shelters, in the browser

Each bed is free, occupied, reserved or under maintenance. The unit keeps the board current, and only free beds show up to the agent.
Each unit sees only the requests sent to it, most urgent first, and the queue refreshes by itself. Approving reserves a bed. Refusing requires a reason, which goes back to the agent.
Reception opens with the reserved bed and the triage done on the street. The unit completes health and contact data, records acceptance of the house rules and checks the person in.
At check-out the unit records the reason for leaving and issues a discharge summary of the person's stay.

Bed management: bed board of a shelter with occupancy — The shelter's bed board, with free, occupied and reserved beds.

Bed management: discharge with a mandatory reason — Check-out requires the reason for leaving.

Printable shelter discharge summary — Discharge summary with unit, dates, length of stay and outcome.

Admin Panel

City coordination, in the browser

Outreach actions move through five stages, from draft to completed. The coordination invites the team, including people who don't use the system, prepares a checklist and keeps an attendance list.
The case record lists the person's history in order: triages, shelter entries and exits, and team notes. Each entry has an author and a time.
An agent can flag that a person's risk has changed; the coordination confirms it. Every risk change needs a reason, and it is logged.
Reports cover occupancy per unit and the distribution of people by level of vulnerability.
The city administration registers staff and assigns profiles. An audit trail records who viewed or changed a record, and when.

Admin panel: the person journey timeline in the case record — The case record shows each shelter entry and exit in order.

Admin panel reports: occupancy by unit and vulnerability distribution — Occupancy per unit and people by vulnerability level.

Admin panel: configurable report types for street actions — Report templates for each outreach action.

Screens with demonstration data, where every person and unit is fictitious.

One night, step by step

The CAD-RUA demonstration follows Cadu, a fictional man who sleeps in a town square, through one night. Three people act on his case: the coordinator, the street agent and the shelter team. All names and numbers are demonstration data.

The coordinator schedules the action
Admin Panel
She creates a night outreach action with reason, place and time, marks the spot on the map, prepares the checklist (warm clothes and hygiene kits, vacancies confirmed with shelters, a vehicle with a driver) and publishes it. Publishing sends the invitation.
The coordinator creates a night outreach action with date, time and place.
Illustrative scene. The coordinator at her desk.
The agent confirms
Field App
The invitation arrives with the date and the place. The agent confirms with one tap, and the coordination sees who confirmed without a phone call.
Field App home screen with the day's action and four shortcuts.
The invitation, with Confirm and Decline.
Participation confirmed, ready for check-in.
Illustrative scene. An agent reads the invitation next to the van.
Check-in at the square
Field App
At the square, check-in records the agent's position. From then on, every service the agent records is linked to that action.
Check-in recorded with the agent's position.
Status In the field, with the button to start triage.
Triage on the street
Field App
With Cadu's consent, the agent goes through the four steps. His nickname comes before his civil name, and documents are optional. The assessment marks high vulnerability, extreme cold and the need for shelter and food. Saving creates his case record, which the coordination can now see.
Triage step 1. The nickname comes before the civil name.
Triage step 4, the summary before saving.
Vacancy request
Field App
The app asks if the agent wants to request a bed. Cadu's data is already filled in. The agent sets high priority, sees which units have a free bed at that moment, picks one, writes the reason for the referral and sends it.
Vacancy request with high priority, listing only units with free beds.
Request sent.
The shelter decides
Vacancy Management
The request enters the shelter's queue without anyone reloading the page. The team reads the reason, checks the priority and approves. The bed is reserved and leaves the list of free beds.
The shelter's bed board filtered to free beds.
The shelter approves the request for Cadu.
Illustrative scene. The shelter's front desk at night.
On the way to the unit
Field App
The agent's phone shows the approval, and one tap opens directions to the shelter. Had the shelter refused, the reason would have arrived the same way and the agent could ask another unit without losing anything already recorded.
The agent receives the approval.
Approved request with directions to the shelter and a shortcut to call.
If the shelter refuses, it must choose a reason.
Reception and check-in
Vacancy Management
The front desk opens with the reserved bed and what the street team recorded: place, vulnerability, needs, notes. The team completes health and contact data, records his acceptance of the house rules and confirms. The bed becomes occupied, the request closes as Sheltered and the agent is notified.
Illustrative scene. Arrival at the shelter.
Reception opens with the reserved bed and the street triage.
Acceptance of the house rules, required at check-in.
In the app, the request now reads Sheltered.
Report and close
Admin Panel
The coordinator sees Cadu on the list of people approached, already sheltered. She writes the technical report and finalizes it, which locks the text with date and time. Only then can the action be marked as completed.
The technical report, filled in.
The finalized report, now read-only.

The next morning

Cadu's record now holds the triage, the vacancy request and the shelter entry. Each entry has an author and a time. The next team that meets him starts from there.

Illustrative scene: a man in his forties holds a cup of coffee at a table in a bright shelter dining room — Illustrative scene. Breakfast at the shelter.

Illustration: the coordinator with a cup of coffee the next morning — Illustrative scene. The coordinator the next morning.

Screens with demonstration data, where every person and unit is fictitious. Scenes marked as illustrative are illustrations, not photographs.

Profiles

The city administration registers each person and assigns one of five profiles. Each profile sees what its job requires.

Street agent: their own services and team.
Shelter manager: their own unit, the requests sent to it and the people sheltered there.
Coordinator: the territory they coordinate.
Municipal administrator: the whole municipality.
Auditor: read-only access, including the audit trail.

Decisions and the reasons behind them

One database for three teams.: The problem was three teams keeping three records. Putting the field app, the shelters and the coordination on the same case record is what lets the street notes reach the front desk before the person.
The agent sees free beds before asking.: Phoning shelter after shelter at night was the slowest part of the work. The request lists only units with a free bed at that moment, and the shelters keep their own board current.
A refusal always comes with a reason.: If a unit says no, the agent needs to know why to choose the next one. The reason travels back in the app, and nothing recorded on the street is lost.
Dignity in the record.: Social name and nickname come before the civil name, documents are optional and triage only starts with consent. When staff write a note, the system reminds them not to record a diagnosis.
When writing a note, staff are reminded not to record a diagnosis.
Each city sees only its own records.: The separation is enforced in the database itself, and nobody working for one city can open another city's records by any route. Neighbouring cities can form an intermunicipal network and choose what to share, such as vacancies and requests.
Sensitive changes need a reason.: Health data in a case record is sensitive under Brazil's data protection law. Changes such as a new risk level are saved only with a reason, and the audit trail shows who viewed or changed each record.
The report locks before the action closes.: The coordination has to account for each action. The technical report locks with date and time, and only then can the action be marked as completed.
Only the street team installs anything.: Shelters and coordination open their tools in the browser, so a unit can start using CAD-RUA on the computer it already has.

What was delivered

Starting in April 2026, the project delivered the three tools working on one case record. They were demonstrated with fictitious data, and the demonstration video walks through the nine steps above in 8 min 40 s.

3 tools on one database
9 steps in the demonstration case
4-step triage
5 access profiles

Illustrative scene: a church square at night, wet from the rain, with a man sleeping on a bench — Demonstration video with fictitious characters, in Portuguese with burned-in captions. 8 min 40 s.

Institutional support and co-authors

Institutional support

FAPERJ
Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Institutional support. CAD-RUA was selected and funded in a competitive FAPERJ call (Call 34/2025, Programa Prioridade Rio).