Cecille Leads Efforts to Map Data on Road Safety Issues In Goa

PANAJI:
It’s not just about restaurants or food trucks anymore, even potholes in Taleigao village now have their own digital place in the app world.

A unique collaborative initiative by ActforGoa, NineStack and Cecille Rodrigues, the brain and force behind the one-of-a-kind and popular Rosto Campaign which has been highlighting road safety issues, has led to the flagging of over 38 potholes, among 80 other road safety issues in the Taleigao village alone, on the PinIt App.

The unique system of digital mapping of road safety issues, according to Cecille, is just the first step towards eliminating road hazards from Taleigao and making the village’s roads safe for travel.

The mapped data was submitted to the Taleigao panchayat by Cecille to be included in the Village Development Plan (VDP). With the accumulated data, Cecille has proposed the setting up of a Road Safety and Traffic Management committee in the panchayat, to deal with the road safety concerns in the Taleigao village.

The collaborative process kicked-off when citizens of Taleigao and others, along with Cecille, collected data by pinning issues related to road safety in and around the village of Taleigao using the ‘PinIt App’.

“Myself, along with the citizens of the village and other like-minded individuals managed to ‘pin’ traffic hazards, potholes, broken or missing signboards, unmarked speed breakers, open waste dumps and a lot of other issues on the virtual map available via PinIt. Around 38 potholes, 18 unpainted speed breakers, 24 broken or missing signboards, 13 broken street lamps, and over 4 bad stretches of uneven roads across Taleigao village, where required corrective action needed to be taken, were identified,” Cecille said. In all, 99 such issues in Taleigao have been geographically mapped using Google Earth software and pinned via PinIt, she said.

“The PinIt app has really helped achieve what we couldn’t, for all these years. It has provided a platform to collect and store data as evidence to bring about a road safety revolution in Taleigao and the whole of Goa,” Cecille also said.

Launched in November this year, the PinIt App is innovation developed by Goa-based application development firm, NineStack in collaboration with ActForGoa.

PinIt was primarily developed to enable users to highlight issues in their immediate surrounding areas that need to be acted upon, as a step towards creating a sustainable future for Goa and to enable users to be a part of the development process in the state.

The app offers 11 different categories which deal with issues as diverse as road safety, waste management, water and sanitation, health and nutrition, biodiversity, animal welfare, child welfare, education, culture or heritage, electricity and public interest or nuisance.

Jill Ferguson, a founding member at ActforGoa explained that each village is expected to outline these type of social issues by December 13 so they can be submitted to each of the village panchayats as part of their Village Development Plan. “We hope village panchayats will make use of the PinIt app to aid in the drafting of their village development plans. We are happy to share all the data crowdsourced through the app with the Panchayats for this purpose. Through this Rosto campaign, we encourage villagers to join in and use PinIt to bring these issues to light, so that the village authorities can act upon it for the betterment of every village and its people,”, said Jill. She also elaborated that one day of the week should be dedicated by the concerned citizens of the village, to map locations that require corrective action.

“It’s always faster and easier to do it on a scooter or a bike, but one can do it while taking their evening stroll”, Jill suggested.