Winter snow can wreak havoc with road travel, a real possibility many municipal government authorities are addressing with technological solutions.
Is Factor On , or ITTO, is our Wednesday column showing how people use technology in unpredicted ways.
People are in possession of new tools to help because the flakes fly this winter, varying from websites to applications that detail info on snow plow routes, road conditions, and which neighbors need assistance shoveling a pavement.
Just in front of the its first snow event of year, the town of Chicago released the ChicagoShovels.org website, including a tracker showing the place of city plows because they obvious the roads. Throughout major snow cleanup efforts, the town will activate the "Plow Tracker" map, permitting the general public to determine, in tangible-time, the progress of city snow plows making snow removal efforts more transparent.
The web site describes the PlowTracker feature included in an attempt to help keep roads obvious and help city government communicate better with people.
"ChicagoShovels.org is a vital resource that does not only notifies Chicagoans about how they may help their neighbors and enables these to begin to see the city's snow enter in action throughout tornados,Inch stated Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a press conference.
Additionally to giving ingredients a concept of the town crew's progress and road conditions, the web site also aims to eliminate misconceptions that snow plow routes favor certain city areas, like individuals of effective political figures. This really is Chicago, in the end, and Emanuel touts transparency.
Additional features from the site range from the "Adopt a Pavement" application, which enables customers to assert pathways to shovel with an interactive map and share snow spades along with other equipment with neighbors, providing them with a platform to arrange and be a part of matched efforts in their own individual communities.
The website's "Snow Corps" function connects volunteers with seniors and disabled citizens having a mouse click, and also to make use of the Windy City's homegrown tech talent, a Winter Applications section helps Chicago-area application designers build new programs.
Finally, for individuals who skipped all of the real-time action and awoke to locate their vehicle missing, WasMyCarTowed.com helps customers learn when the city towed their vehicle and where cars are situated.
On the other hand of Lake Michigan, authorities in neighboring Michigan's Wayne County, including the town of Detroit, developed Compass, an interactive website that allows people in which the county's salt trucks are and which streets deck hands have plowed, helping citizens plan safer routes.
Additionally, Compass allows people view road conditions online in the driver's perspective, since a portion from the snow-clearing automobiles feature onboard camcorders that send footage on the two-minute delay.
Compass pulls information every ten seconds in the county's number of trucks to make sure timely updates.
The data presented on Compass is culled from a number of sources, such as the Internet, weather data, Google traffic, condition traffic cameras, and fleet management data, giving citizens use of it on this page.
Wayne County authorities, like individuals in Chicago, indicate the reassurance the machine gives citizens the county comes with its trucks out on the highway and aren't looking at their hands in the center of a snow storm.
"There is a practical side from it -- seeing what's neat and what's not [and] seeing video from the streets which have been washed," Zayd Allebban, director of enterprise programs for Wayne County, stated. "However on the other hand from it, this is an accountability and transparency factor. It's citizen money that's funding all of this, so that they certainly possess a to see precisely what we're doing by using it.Inch
The following upgrade of Compass will install camcorders around the relaxation from the salt trucks within the county's fleet, and designers are wishing to unveil a much more interactive version from the system so people can report on their behavior information, like particularly bad streets that require attention.
While Compass is just available like a website, the county is at the time of creating a mobile application version of Compass for iOS and Android products.
Chicago's plow tracker will probably be tweaked too. Preliminary feedback from the trial run show the postponed page loading might have triggered the overload around the server, plus some experts suggest Chicago authorities should incorporate user feedback for future updates.
With a minimum of two several weeks left of winter months, both Detroit and Chicago can get more chances to check and tweak their online tools to make certain people have immediate information when moving the following large blizzard.
ITTO: Moving Snow storms with Plow-Monitoring Tools initially made an appearance at Mobiledia on Get married Jan 18, 2012 4:12 pm.
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