Boston to enlist your iPhone in the Battle Against Potholes

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iPhone and pothole
Photo: David L Ryan, Boston Globe

Potholes? Now There’s an App for That.

Snow and ice take a heavy toll on roads every year, and this winter has been brutal here in New England. Large potholes have already appeared all over the Boston area, with roads still clogged with snow. Fortunately some high-tech wizards here in my hometown are working on a solution. The Boston Globe reports on an effort to help solve this problem using iPhones and other mobile devices:

A new app, called Street Bump, would automatically report potholes to the city by sensing when a car has hit a bump. The app, in development, would be sensitive enough to identify cracks and divots, alerting the city to pavement problems before they become car-crunching craters.

The application relies on two components embedded in iPhones, Android phones, and many other mobile devices: the accelerometer and the Global Positioning System receiver. The accelerometer, which determines the direction and acceleration of a phone’s movement, can be harnessed to identify when a phone resting on a dashboard or in a cupholder in a moving car has hit a bump; the GPS receiver can determine by satellite just where that bump is located.

The application is being developed by the Boston Office of New Urban Mechanics, a part of the Mayor’s Office. Current procedures require citizens or city workers to report potholes individually, by phone, online or via the Boston Citizen’s Connect iPhone app. Once deployed this new application will help automate the process, collecting data from people as they drive (and bounce) around the city throughout the day.

On a test drive yesterday afternoon, as a Ford Taurus stamped with the mayoral seal circled the Boston Common, Jacob’s and Osgood’s phones beeped, realtime graphs on the displays dancing, every time the car was jostled. Intensive testing this spring and summer should help calibrate the application to weed out noise — sewer grates, elevated crosswalks, and the like — and identify only potholes.

My car and I look forward to testing this service out when it’s available!

Boston.com: Weapons in the battle vs. potholes

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