3 ms·
Ask HN: Crowdsourcing a Map in Rural Africa
Hi HN!
I am asking for your guidance again.
The problem:
In Subsaharan Africa, maps are unreliable and/or unavailable.
Excluding city centers, there are no addresses, street names or the likes.
The context:
I was shocked by the smartphone penetration. Everyone has at least one smartphone with GPS/Camera and Whatsapp/email (Thanks India & China). The 4g/LTE service is reliable & cheap.
The idea:
With a relatively young population and a low cost of living, I can afford to pay people to crowdsource streets, homes, shops, etc...
Thus I am building an android app for that.
Taking a picture of every door you see
Mapping roads with the user GPS
Adding elements such as road condition/infrastructure
The question:
How would you advise me to build such a service?
Should I ask the user to open the app while he is moving, and taking pictures of every door he sees? Then add it to a map?
How can I generate an accurate map from hundreds of user travel histories and geo-tagged pictures?
I'm gladly receiving every piece of advice
My knowledge:
I owned mobility as a service Saas B2G company in rural Canada called Proxybus. I have worked with OSM (OpenStreetMaps), and I'm a fairly skilled full-stack developer.
- saintamh 5y agoIt seems the OSM ecosystem already has everything you need. Mapillary, OpenStreetCam or StreetComplete can be used to take geolocated photos that are then used to draw a map. The HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team) has organised crowdsourced mapping efforts in Africa for many years now, and has developed open-source software to support those.