Through the fieldwork we found that it is necessary to monitor and share information about the sidewalks. There may be counter arguments that this is a waste of resources and effort. But my counter-argument is that building such a system is the equivalent of a seat belt for pedestrians, and according to CrashStats by CDC in 2017, in Pedestrian Location, only about 9% of injuries are in the non-trafic area, which is broadly defined as the sidewalk. In other words, maintaining a walkable sidewalk is the best protection for pedestrians' right to life.

The first thing the platform will build is a mapping system integration, which will most likely involve cooperation and exchange of information with existing mapping systems. The second step is to allow contributors to upload information about the location of existing sidewalks, mostly along roads, with a few requiring manual road mapping. This is followed by a safety alert system that allows the uploading of photos and locations to mark sidewalks that have been in accidents, are under maintenance, or are a safety hazard, depending on the degree of red, orange, yellow, and green decreasing from dangerous to safe. Pedestrians can view road information and hazard alerts before or during their trip.

It is practical and affordable to construct such a platform. Existing mapping and navigation systems are very systematic and complete, all we need to do is to mark the sidewalks, we already have open source mapping information sharing platforms such as openstreetmap with which cooperation and deep integration is possible. Existing established and active developers can contribute projects on e.g. github.

Works Cited

“Traffic Safety Facts 2017 Data: Pedestrians.” TRID, 28 Feb. 2019, trid.trb.org/view/1592062.

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