Just curious, if you were to collect data about potholes in Nigeria? How would you go about it?
I’m afraid you’ll have to walk the length and breadth of roads in Nigeri lol, that’s if you are looking for near accurate data
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In the civilised world, there is normally self-serviced tool where citizens can report the location of potholes. Some citizens can go as far as providing the council or LG the exact GPS coordinates, photos and videos. Some poor dude job will be to verify theses reports maybe once a week. Once the pothole is located, it’s marked with a very large “X” with a flouresent substance - not because the council cares about it citizens but to prevent lawsuits and insurance claims. Once the big boys conclude who the contract goes to after a game of golf and a swinging orgy with reluctant very hot Czech babes, in about 30 days times, some poor Eastern European bloke will turn up with some tar while the Project Manager, Health Safety Officer, Bugdet Control officer, Disaster Recovery Officer, Risk Analyst, Service Delivery Manager and Information Assurance officer debate on the teleconference bridge why Arsenal can never win the premiership in order to justify their daily rate. Once the pothole is cover and the Eastern European bloke is paid his minimum wage, that’s where the real works begins. A “lessons learnt” document needs to be generated and have to go through very tough version control. Once it’s approved, say after 18 months then it has to find itself into the overall Policy Framework for the council or LG.
So don’t you think this will be a very good process to apply in Nigeria?
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Lol. You should become some sort of novelty account on Radar with stories like this.
@xwiz Currently doing something similar for a client and sadly, it involves driving along the roads (Lagos to Ibadan for starters) and collecting data with pictures. The end result would be truck drivers with a tablet on the dashboard that warns and tells them to slow down in their preferred language if there is a pothole ahead.
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[quote=“Tola, post:3, topic:2740”]
Once the big boys conclude who the contract goes to after a game of golf and a swinging orgy with reluctant very hot Czech babes, in about 30 days time [/quote]
Golf, swinging orgy, hot Czech babes. Oh my God, upgrade me to this status in this lifetime. Amen.
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Still laughing at your awesome but twisted sense of humour 
On a more serious note, what about satellite imagery? This reminds me: when was the last time you heard about our 2 or 3 satellites? What are they used for right now? Are they still functional? They could come very handy for such applications.
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Still on the satellite issue. Pls can anyone verify what our SatComm 1 is doing orbit
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- Create a list of all Nigerian roads.
- Write algorithm to randomly select 80% of these roads. Voila! You have your data. Thank me later.
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Very smart this one. You can also input areas (those very few places we know have generally better roads) where the algorithm should include less in the sample space to improve accuracy. Lol
How does satellite imagery work?
Doesn’t that just say the number of roads with potholes? What about data like how many potholes on each road, at what point the potholes are and how deep they are?
You can use a few road samples to tell the average number of pot holes per kilometer, then use that to estimate number of potholes in the randomly selected roads.
PS: You do know my previous answer was sarcasm, right? The idea is that there are just too many potholes, there’s no point counting.
Of course I do. Just wanted to probe.
For all you know, there could really be a way to do this using tech, I just wonder why the guy wants the data
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Interestingly just on Sunday, I was thinking of how cars can determine if there are headed for potholes especially when it rains and the road is flooded.
I thought of the following idea: a car can be equipped with an ultrasonic sensor which can quickly provide topology image of the next say 100 meters of road. Such sensor will work the same way echo is used to estimate ocean depth and should be accurate to the nearest inch at least. Just a thought. Better ways will definitely exist to solve this problem.
As for our original question, I think the best bet will be to provide an incentive for people to send in pictures of potholes around them i.e. incentivised crowdsourcing
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That’s the best way, get people to send all kinds of data about potholes. Which kain incentives go dey?
I recently participated in a Close-up survey, in the form of a promo. They have a lot of “prizes”, and they’ll recharge your line immediately after the survey. Guess how much it was, N50! At least now I also “stand a chance” to win a car 
‘Citizens’ will normally do stuff like this with no expectation of some pay back or incentives. The critical issue is the medium. Giving the state of Nigerian roads, the probably of logging 1 million daily pothole reports is very high, this may likely impact on the dedicated website used (depending). “sorry the website is currently down due to high traffic, you can log your report later”
That’s why bad guys will build it. But, must a website be used for coalition? Is messaging an option?
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Guess @lordbanks and @seyitaylor needs to fetch those guys for an AMA session. It’s been a while I heard from them.
But then @xolubi, you mean you’re working on a project that has to do with pot holes? I bet, you would reject mine as I’m searching for someone that could help get stat of holes on the road in Kogi State (because I’m planning a trip in December back home).
But chai, Idris Wada, so unfortunate we have an uncaring government in Kogi State. 
you can check this http://cmapit.com/ i think they are using the mapping strategy…
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