Alongside work with scaling out Ramani Huria and working with (awesome!) colleagues on the signing of an Memorandum of Understanding between Ardhi University, World Bank, and DfID to support the development of curriculum (with ITC Twente) and the sustainability of community mapping in Tanzania for the next five years. I’ve been working on a side project to look at how machine learning can be used to assess road quality.
To do this, the N/LAB team at University of Nottingham and Spatial Info (the spin out of my team that helped build Ramani Huria/Tanzania Open Data Initiative) and I are working with the Zanzibari Department of Roads, under the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport to survey all roads in Ugunja Island Zanzibar.
So far, we’ve worked on getting a surveying vehicle back on the road, initial back and forth with government stakeholders, and working on pulling together the various road data sources (such those from the Government and OpenStreetMap) to work out where to drive and the sequencing of the survey. All of this will support a data collection protocol that merges traditional surveying techniques, with novel ones such as RoadLab Pro.
All of these data streams will then be used as a training dataset to see how machine learning can inform on road quality. But first, we’re getting the traditional survey underway. It’s going to be long road ahead – as long as all the roads in Zanzibar!
Watch this space, the project’s Medium page, and the N/LAB’s blog on using machine learning for automated feature detection from imagery. Get in contact below in the comments as well.
Written in the Al-Minaar Hotel, Stone Town, Zanzibar (-6.16349,39.18690)
Mark's Brain 