From Down To Town

Thousands of people around the world face major difficulties when it comes to the state of the infrastructure of their town/communities. From potholes to defective streetlights many of these issues can be easily solved by the responsible authorities. However, the reporting process is long and tedious with little to no ability to track the progress of the report.

From Down to Town is an AI based application with built in AR that bridges the gap between the citizens and the authorities. Hence the users will be able to anonymously report using an AR enabled camera any issue that needs fixing in their town. They will also be able to track their reports and rank the effectiveness of the respective authorities. On the other hand, the authorities will have access to a huge data-base provided by user input with the ability to better monitor the town and improve quality of life.

A noticeable problem conveyed to us by the NGOs in the areas they work in is that the community members feel like they have zero control over their living situation and the state of the infrastructure around them. On the other hand, the municipalities or responsible entities are receiving many complaints on aspects they lack authority over. Another problem that prominently surfaced itself is the lack of response rates to the valid complaints submitted to the municipalities and authorities, many surveys attributed that aspect to the absence of sense of responsibility among them. The rates of corruptions also go unnoticed or unaccounted for. Many also attribute the lack of response to absence of relevant date on the problems. Basically, it’s a matter of motivating citizens and holding those responsible accountable.

We are designing this application to help all the citizens in reporting day to day problems in infrastructure and more. These citizens include those directly affected by those problems. We are working with them via an application through which they can report the problems that need to be fixed within a town by snapping a picture of the incident. This picture will then be processed by an AI algorithm and will finally be sent to a personal at the municipality in charge of fixing this issue. Two weeks after reporting the incident, the citizen will be asked to rate the municipality according to their solution. Within these two weeks, he will be able to chat anonymously with a personal for any enquiries if present. Moreover, the citizen can choose to fill a survey about the quality of the service offered by the municipality along with other open-ended questions to further improve their experience in this town. This application will also serve the municipality by providing useful anonymous data about the users for their own interest. Also, they will be able to check their ranking compared to other municipalities.

From Down to Town is an app that enables citizens to report issues/hazards that are present in their communities. First, the app benefits the citizens by giving them the power to act and benefit their communities through active reporting and constructive criticism whose end-goal is improving the quality of life in local communities. Indeed, people will have the ability to track their active reports and will have access to a historical database of reports in all communities with a track record of the effectiveness of the responsible authorities to increase accountability. All the reports whether active or archived will be publicly available with the ability for both authorities and citizens to comment on the report and voice their opinions. The reporting will be done either manually or using an Augmented Reality enabled phone camera that will recognize the hazard and report it to the designated authorities. Second, the authorities greatly benefit from the app since it enables them to efficiently fix the problems in their community while also improving their reputation. The authorities will also benefit from a large pool of data with the ability to send surveys through the app to target demographics of specific age brackets. The data gathered will be treated using and sent back to authorities in their preferred forms.