After our information sharing platform has been built, you can download our app, which includes a map of the sidewalk. You can use it both to assist you in your travels and to help keep the system up to date and accurate. Your contribution is crucial, not only to help everyone get around, but also to keep them safe.

You can see some sidewalk safety markings on the map, and if a piece of the map is orange or even red, please tell government officials immediately that it may be troublesome or even dangerous for non-professionals, and if you see one that meets the orange or red criteria but is not marked, you can take a picture and upload the time-stamped information in a timely manner, and the reviewed information will be milked by the system and updated immediately, it’s that simple!

Sidewalks that meet the orange or red criteria include: those with major blockages such as rocks, large trees or their branches that cannot be removed; those with significant collapses or cracks; those with significant depressions or bulges; those extremely close to construction projects with large amounts of gravel and dust floes; those extremely close to projects with overhead work; those with large amounts of standing water, overflows; those with large amounts of snow; those with ice floes, etc.

There are counter arguments that keeping the system up to date is not possible, and there are indeed difficulties in keeping the information very fresh and accurate. But auditing and building a better platform can help us do that, so that we can use vehicles to automatically photograph the sidewalks along the street, and auditors or machine recognition can identify whether the information is credible or not. We don’t need to keep sidewalk information very current. In extreme weather, hardly anyone goes out, and when the weather passes, it’s time for action. According to Evans-Cowley, J. (2006), there are problems such as lack of sidewalk maintnance, pedestrian planning, political & financial support, technical capacity, etc. We can help solve the key technical issue here, by digitalizing sidewalks information.

Works Cited

Evans-Cowley, Jennifer. “Sidewalk Planning and Policies in Small Cities.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 132, no. 2, 2006, pp. 71–75., doi:10.1061/(asce)0733-9488(2006)132:2(71).

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