Title
Twende-twende: a mobile application for traffic congestion awareness and routing
Abstract
According to the UN-HABITAT, the city of Nairobi loses half a million USD daily due to congestion on roads designed for a city 10 times smaller. Therefore, there is a great need for traffic management and awareness solutions. Many existing solutions are unsuitable for cities like Nairobi due to economic constraints, dynamic events, uncertainty, and poor infrastructure. Recently, a novel approach called Frugal Innovation has been adopted at IBM Tokyo Research. The approach combines very low quality images (VLQI) captured by existing low-cost cameras with network flow algorithms to accurately estimate traffic flow. We extend their work to develop a mobile app, called Twende-Twende, that provides drivers with real-time traffic information and suggested routes. We incorporate locally relevant context (such as references to landmarks) to predict congestion and create traffic awareness. We deployed the app and evaluated its effectiveness, accuracy and usability. Our initial evaluation indicates that the app enhances the driving experience and can be deployed in other developing countries.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2593902.2593926
MOBILESoft
Keywords
Field
DocType
traffic congestion,human factors,mobile application,land marking,general,frugal innovation
Mobile app,IBM,Traffic flow,Frugal innovation,Computer security,Usability,Transport engineering,Traffic awareness,Engineering,Economic constraints,Traffic congestion
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.49
11
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Andrew Kinai1134.36
Reginald E. Bryant2133.72
Aisha Walcott-Bryant3467.69
Eric Mibuari472.13
Komminist Weldemariam515427.27
Osamuyimen Stewart6547.53