THE Department of Transportation (DOTr) announced on Wednesday it will gather Filipino developers, information technology (IT) and digital media talents, and road safety enthusiasts in a national Road-Safety Idea Hack.
“The Road Safety Idea Hack welcomes people from diverse backgrounds, whether in app development, digital media, social science, data sciences, road-safety advocacy and all who are excited and interested to learn more about open data and road-safety,” a statement by the DOTr said.
According to the government’s transportation management agency, interested participants will form teams to produce ideas, analyses, methodologies, digital media, advocacy campaigns and application (app) prototypes to improve road safety in the Philippines. Participants are expected to use the OpenTraffic data provided by Grab, the road-crash data aggregated by the DOTr and other datasets, such as jeepney routes and school locations. The DOTr explained entries will be judged according to expected impact, creativity, feasibility and presentation.
Road safety is a critical issue affecting the lives of millions of Filipinos, and through the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan (2011 to 2020), the DOTr is committed to reduce road crashes by 50 percent. While crashes can be mitigated with targeted policy and infrastructure interventions, these interventions need to be well-informed by evidence.
Hence, the DOTr is enlisting the support of the public to use its new open data sets to find solutions that will help meet this target.
“Through this initiative, we plan to tap the country’s ICT [information and communications technology]talents and road-safety community to develop innovative solutions,” DOTr Assistant Secretary for Land Transport and Infrastructure Mark de Leon said.
The DOTr will also be launching a new platform called Data for Road Incident Visualization Evaluation and Reporting or “Driver”, a Web-based and open-source national system for geo-spatially recording and analyzing road crashes.
The Road Safety Idea Hack will also feature workshops using traffic and road-safety data sets at the Crowne Plaza, Ortigas Avenue, Quezon City, on March 13 and 18.