Government taps open data to support efforts to reduce road crashes
The Department of Transportation (DOTr) and partner agencies will gather Filipino developers, IT and digital media talents, and road safety enthusiasts in a national Road Safety Idea Hack, which also features workshops using traffic and road safety data sets at the Crowne Plaza, Ortigas Avenue, Quezon City on March 13 and 18.
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.
Interested participants will form teams to produce ideas, analyses, methodologies, digital media, advocacy campaigns and app prototypes to improve road safety in the Philippines, using OpenTraffic data provided by Grab, road crash data aggregated by the DOTr, and other datasets, such as jeepney routes and school locations. Entries will be judged according to expected impact, creativity, feasibility, and presentation. The panel of judges will be announced shortly.
Registered participants who are not joining the competition are also invited to free workshops on March 13, where they can learn new skills, such as using Mapillary or the Open Street Map, or about how to become a road safety advocate.
Road safety is a critical issue affecting the lives of millions of Filipinos, and through the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan (2011-2020), the DOTr is committed to reduce road crashes by 50%. 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.
“The DOTr, led by Sec. Art Tugade, is strongly committed to address the country’s challenges in road safety and improve the country’s transportation. Accurate and reliable data on road crashes and multi-sectoral collaboration are crucial to achieve these goals. Through this initiative, we plan to tap the country’s ICT 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 (DRIVER), a web-based and open-source national system for geo-spatially recording and analyzing road crashes. DRIVER can be publicly accessed at www.roadsafety.gov.ph and is currently populated with data from Metro Manila, Cebu, and Dipolog.
Grab is the leading sponsor of the Idea Hack alongside the World Bank, the Korea Green Growth Partnership, Globe, Petron, Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety, Mapillary, Ateneo School of Government, Imagine Law, Vera Files, Azavea, Mapzen, Far Eastern University Institute of Technology, Inclusive Mobility, MapPH, Metro Manila Development Authority, Netsquared Manila, OpenStreetMap Philippines, Open Knowledge Philippines, Urban Land Institute, Youth Mappers, among others.
“The country is in for an innovative event as people of different professions will be coming together to brainstorm for solutions to road safety problems. Technology and data are at the core of our business and something we’ve been sharing with the Philippine government since April 2016. Grab highly encourages everyone to participate to help make transportation safer for Filipinos,” Grab PH Country Head Brian Cu said.
For more information and to participate in the upcoming Road Safety Idea Hack Week, visit https://ideahack2017.eventbrite.com.
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