Design and implementation of an offline-first road crash data collection system

Abstract

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are a global burden that particularly affects people in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization, having reliable and precise data is necessary to raise the alert on the scale of road accidents and convince decision-makers of the need to take action. Each year, nearly 700 people lose their lives due to accidents on Senegalese roads. In Senegal, dis-aggregated data related to accidents are rare due to very significant under-recording. Most of these data are in a non-computerized form and their collection methods differ from one side to the other among road safety actors. The task of collecting data is simply considered of secondary importance for certain road safety actors. The disparity between the collection methods as well as collected data and the non computerized collection processes limit the possibility of having a real knowledge of the phenomenon of road accidents. In this work, we present a global solution of a road crash data collection and management system. In particular, we will focus here on the collection component with an application that aims to federate data collection processes of all road safety actors in Senegal. It uses a collection guide designed after a review of road accident data guides in Senegal and in other regions of the world. It also implements a parallel collection methodology, i.e the possibility of several agents working on collecting data for the same accident.