A Mobile-Based Deployment of a Frugal ITS System for Nairobi, Kenya

Developing cities often face a number of challenges related to urban infrastructure and mobility. These challenges include rampant and unpredictable traffic congestion, dynamically changing driving conditions, a significant number of traffic accidents, and limited traffic law enforcement. Many of these cities also have minimal resources to provide ongoing roadway and traffic data. Such data are critical to management, maintenance, and planning of roadways, and also essential in developing reliable and accurate mobility services for motorists. As an example, roadways in Nairobi, Kenya, are highly dynamic and support a wide variety of transportation modes. It is common to see pedestrians, animals, and heavy goods vehicles sharing the roads. In addition, many of the roads suffer from poor infrastructure maintenance leaving major roadways with large potholes, cracks, and other surface aberrations. To capture the data required to address mobility in such developing cities, contextualized intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) are required. The authors present the Living Roads Framework (LRF), an intelligent transportation solution for resource-constrained developing cities. The authors describe the deployment of a probe vehicle-based application of the LRF on public waste collection heavy-duty trucks in Nairobi, Kenya where smartphones with integrated inertial sensors were mounted to the trucks. The results show that the authors are able to capture important roadway and driver dynamics by collecting high-frequency data on road segments between 50 to 100 meters. From local models derived from the data, the authors present an analysis of the vehicle coverage, road surface conditions, and driver behavior on different roadway types in Nairobi.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Standing Committee on Transportation in the Developing Countries. Alternate title: A Mobile-Based Deployment of a Frugal IT System for Nairobi, Kenya.
• Authors:
  • Walcott-Bryant, Aisha
  • Bryant, Reginald E
  • Tatsubori, Michiaki
  • Emaasit, Daniel
  • Osebe, Sam
  • Wamburu, John
  • Maina, Peter
  • Wachira, Charles
  • Remy, Sekou L
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 6p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Data collection; Developing countries; Drivers; Intelligent transportation systems; Probe vehicles; Smartphones; Surface course (Pavements)
• Geographic Terms: Nairobi (Kenya)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01659729
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-06784
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 9 2018 4:52PM