Every year in Armenia, around 2000 people are killed in traffic accidents. Many more are injured.
How can we reduce this number? The assumption of one active citizen, Armen Melkonyan, is that not all of these causalities are inevitable – that by decreasing the time it takes for ambulances to provide emergency support, or by calculating which roads are more accident prone, we might be able to reduce the risks of road travel and increase the likelihood of survival in the event of an accident.
During a local Hackathon, organized with Silicon Valley-based #CreateTogether and PicsArt, Armen decided to approach this task in a novel way: by harnessing the power of data analytics!
Here’s how: since 2011, the Armenian capital of Yerevan has had traffic cameras installed at every single intersection in the city. The cameras are primarily used to record traffic violations, but by thinking outside the box, they can be put to another use…
Armen’s idea is simple. The data received from the traffic cameras will be analyzed using special algorithms to manage traffic flows and to calculate optimized routes of commute. So when opening the mobile app, the users will be able to see which streets are open for driving and which routes should be avoided at a certain period of time. Users of the tool will be able to check the traffic flows and design the most effective route for the moment.
At an immediate level, traffic flow information can be directly disseminated to emergency services, showing them routes of travel that have lower traffic flows, thereby reducing the time it takes them to arrive at the scene of an accident.
In the longer term, this technology could provide several insights into predicting where traffic accidents are likely to occur, and ultimately taking proactive steps to avoid them.
Currently in the piloting stage, Armen and his team are building a tool to target the busiest congestion points in Yerevan. The platform, ArmTraffic, will be available for both web users (at www.armtraffic.am), and for smartphones owners (the beta version of which will be launched soon!).
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