MillenniumPost
Bengal

State govt to use data analytics to strengthen 'Safe Drive Save Life'

Kolkata: The state government is planning to use data analytics in an effective manner to strengthen "Safe Drive Save Life" campaign initiative that was launched by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in July 2016.
"It will be really fruitful if we can use data analysis to save lives on city roads. Predicting accidents is not an impossible proposition with data analytics," additional Chief Secretary Information Technology Department Debashis Sen said on the sidelines of an international workshop on Big Data for Better Governance organised jointly by IIT Kharagpur and British Deputy High Commission in Kolkata on Tuesday.
Sen said the government has already done GIS mapping and have marked accident prone areas in New Town.
"We have already taken some measures to curb accidents at such spots but we believe that by analytics we can make real time interventions," he maintained.
The government and the traffic wing of Bidhannagar City Police together have put up additional traffic signals, increased police presence, enhanced the lighting arrangement for better visibility during nights and done road markings. It may be mentioned that roads in New Town do not have speed breakers. In some cases, the government is changing road geometry to curb accidents.
Recently, a brainstorming session was held with an IBM team to pinpoint the use of cutting edge technology to help a man on the street where it was discussed that by using analytics on CCTV, accidents/collisions can be avoided.
Bhargab Moitra, professor at the Civil Engineering department at IIT Kharagpur said they are already working on a model project to predict accidents on city roads to bring down the number of accidents.
"We have gathered a comprehensive data of the conflict points for vehicles and also identified the accident prone areas in the city. We are collating these data to identify the reasons for such situations and accordingly offer a solution to the Kolkata Police. KP have provided with video evidences and we have studied on our own at some other places," said Sudeshna Mitra of the Civil Engineering department at IIT Kharagpur, who is working on the component of predicting accidents.
Mitra added that they have found in some areas pedestrians have to wait at traffic signals for a long time while crossing the road and as a result they often lose patience and cross the road in a hurry. Also, people hardly use Zebra crossing because of its location. "These factors are being taken into account," she added.
Next Story
Share it