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Citizen Reporter App- Infrastructure issues Mitul Sarkar

Einleitung

Intelligente Regionen Deutschlands

Beschreibung

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There are hundreds of thousands of kilometers of roads, pavements, bridges, buildings, walls, stormwater drains, cables, pipes, etc across Germany. These infrastructure require supervision and maintenance, and delay in spotting flaws or damage can degrade them to the extent that they cost much more to repair later. My concept empowers the German people to take better and timely care of their infrastructure.

My IDEA is to use German people's eyes & ears, and the connectivity of smartphones to create a powerful reporting tool in the form of a smartphone app or/and reporting service. This tool will allow anyone to report the location and type of infrastructure that may need repair, and attach a photo of the relevant infrastructure. After this report is transmitted from a smartphone to a data processing system, this report becomes available to the authorities (e.g. municipal authorities), to local utility companies that might be responsible for maintaining and repairing that infrastructure, and - importantly- to other citizens. So, the report is transparent for all, though the person sending the report can choose to anonymize his/her identity. The GPS metadata from the phone, attached to the photo and the report, means that it will be geographically mapped (e.g. using Google Maps). The authorities, utility companies or people viewing the report can then visually evaluate the image and the report, and the data aggregation algorithm will also show them how many people are reporting the same issue (i.e. how many people are concerned about it). The authorities or utility companies can then estimate how urgent the repair is, decide how to prioritize it or schedule it, and then address it in the most efficient manner.

When citizens easily and seamlessly report issues that need the intervention of municipal authorities and utility companies, the repairs and maintenance can be carried out in a more timely and efficient manner. Timely interventions are often cheaper, too, since waiting too long means the problem can grow and become more expensive to fix.

INCENTIVES for REPORTERS. Citizens automatically get points when they report issues. If the authorities or local utility companies determine that the report was useful, they can award extra points to the person who reported, a thank you on social media, etc. While the incentive points system is not a currency, it introduces social gamification and encourages users to try to the top through useful reporting. Local authorities may also award free event tickets or special seats at events to the leading reporters.

FEASIBILITY. All the technology already exists, and this method is much cheaper than hoping to cover all possible structures and bridges with millions of smart sensors. Why? Because, in locations that are easily visible to people, human eyes and brains can do a better and faster job of spotting and classifying issues. For example, a citizen reporter who sees a traffic signal damaged by the wind, a street pole that has graffiti on it, and a broken window in a private home, all located close to each other, can quickly guess that the traffic signal and street pole are probably serviced by departments within the local municipal authority- and categorize the higher priority item (traffic light) and report it. At the same time, the reporter knows that the broken window in a private building is not a municipal issue, and the reporter can use his/her judgement to decide whether to report it as possible criminal activity to the public safety department (police) through the app, or wait for a couple of days to see if the building owners repair the window themselves. Quick reporting, photographic evidence, classification/categorization, suggested prioritization - all thanks to citizen reporters!

For an EXAMPLE of how the user interface might look, see the attached images and files, and read about a similar app concept for Africa.

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