Just curious, if you were to collect data about potholes in Nigeria? How would you go about it?

Wen i try connecting My glo bolt modem to my laptop,it does not connect.i says that dat it is stoped by d remote computer.wot can b d reason?

nathaniel98:
Wen i try connecting My glo bolt modem to my laptop,it does not connect.i says that dat it is stoped by d remote computer.wot can b d reason?

Fool. What connects the post to this your stupid question?

skydancer:
Just curious, if you were to collect data about potholes in Nigeria? How would you go about it?

This thread looks stale, can we revive it plz?

crotonite:

This thread looks stale, can we revive it plz?

Any ideas?

skydancer:
Any ideas?

YEA!

crotonite:

YEA!

I'm all ears..

Use a cellphone app that collects accelerometer data when someone is driving. Use it alongside GPS data to ensure that the assumed potholes actually occur on streets. Without the GPS data, it would be easy to collect false positives, because simply shaking the cellphone will result in a pothole notification. Of course, that is just a crude summary. It would certainly take a lot more thinking and planning to implement it as expected.

ChinenyeN:
Use a cellphone app that collects accelerometer data when someone is driving. Use it alongside GPS data to ensure that the assumed potholes actually occur on streets. Without the GPS data, it would be easy to collect false positives, because simply shaking the cellphone will result in a pothole notification. Of course, that is just a crude summary. It would certainly take a lot more thinking and planning to implement it as expected.

I am also thinking of some thing similar. i think the accelerometer is not neccesary because it will always give false result. i am currently using an s40 device so i can't speak much at the moment.

True, the accelerometer itself may not be necessary for something like this, but ultimately, it eliminates the overhead associated with other means of data collection. With the accelerometer, all it takes is a simple shake and you have your data. In terms of outright data collection, this method will likely be the most direct and cost effective option. GPS data that measures course and speed can be used to filter out most of the false positive data during data collection.

Then, actually identifying which pieces of data indicate actual potholes would come later during the data analysis phase. This is where the bulk of the work will take place. Here we can handle whatever small margin of false positives remain. This is simply the route I would take. With this route, I'd spend less time collecting data and more time analyzing it to actually identify true potholes.

ChinenyeN:
True, the accelerometer itself may not be necessary for something like this, but ultimately, it eliminates the overhead associated with other means of data collection. With the accelerometer, all it takes is a simple shake and you have your data. In terms of outright data collection, this method will likely be the most direct and cost effective option. GPS data that measures course and speed can be used to filter out most of the false positive data during data collection.

Then, actually identifying which pieces of data indicate actual potholes would come later during the data analysis phase. This is where the bulk of the work will take place. Here we can handle whatever small margin of false positives remain. This is simply the route I would take. With this route, I'd spend less time collecting data and more time analyzing it to actually identify true potholes.

On a second/alternative note, what prevents one from developing this sort of application for armed/police forces who stand on the road all day? Won't then this be a reliable way of getting data about the major roads in Nigeria and also a way of the police contributing more to the government?

to collect potholes data (location) on the federal and state roads, we can:

we can build a mobile app: since most smartphones we have are equipped with GPS, we can use them to collect potholes data. the app will have a single button which should be pressed by the app user once he approaches a pothole which will save the gps reading at that exact moment to a file/db. the data (gps coordinate) collected will be saved to a log file that will be uploaded to a remote server for further analyses. the data can be collected by vulenteer users (preferably those that travel alot) for a minimum period of like, 2weeks.

Data collected will be superimposed as markers (red marker for unpatched, green marker for a patched potholes) on a map (lets say google map), which will be of help to those doing the patching, and the progress monitoring team.

the patching team will have a modified version of the app that can alert the remote server of a patched potholes so that it can update the central database.

still open for modifications!!!

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what do think guys, should we get our hands dirty already?

ChinenyeN:
True, the accelerometer itself may not be necessary for something like this, but ultimately, it eliminates the overhead associated with other means of data collection. With the accelerometer, all it takes is a simple shake and you have your data. In terms of outright data collection, this method will likely be the most direct and cost effective option. GPS data that measures course and speed can be used to filter out most of the false positive data during data collection.

Then, actually identifying which pieces of data indicate actual potholes would come later during the data analysis phase. This is where the bulk of the work will take place. Here we can handle whatever small margin of false positives remain. This is simply the route I would take. With this route, I'd spend less time collecting data and more time analyzing it to actually identify true potholes.

using accelerometer is a good idea, but mind you most drivers don't jump into potholes, rather they dodge them.

i had the opportunity to travel from jos to bauchi today, and i was really observant of how the driver react to potholes, and there were so many potholess he passed without any noticeable vibration. infact most noticeable vibrations were as a result of bumps/ridges on the road.

I think there may be some sort of a break in communication here. Let me further expand on my point. Road maintenance is strictly the responsibility of government. To that end, I never envisioned a solution that would rely on 'most drivers' (a.k.a civilians). I also do not anticipate that potholes would be so large as to render a vehicle unable to continue driving (unless there is something I don't know about potholes in Naija).

So, with that in mind, I anticipated that the most cost-effective approach would be to use something akin to an all-terrain vehicle, manned by a single government employee, with a mobile app to record data as said employee drives (over potholes). Naturally, a single employee will not do all the driving. There will be others. I am not claiming this to be the best way (I don't believe in anything like that). These are simply my thoughts on how I would go about the data collection process.