Ask:

Adapt an existing Android application (such as Ushahidi or FLOW) to allow citizens and urban planning students of Tandale, an unplanned neighborhood of Dar Es Salaam, to report overflowing road side drains and culverts.

On hand at the Water Hackathon in DC and London, we will have Android-based Huawei IDEOS smartphone (the cheapest smartphone in the world). The day after the hackathon, we will fly with the phones (uploaded w/ the awesome applications that you create) and immediately put the phones to use for data collection.

The reports will go to the Ramani Tandale Ushahidi instance, and will be used to introduce citizen voice into an upcoming $75 million World Bank urban infrastructure upgrading project in Dar Es Salaam.

Background:

Roughly 70% of Dar Es Salaam, one of the fastest growing cities in the world, is unplanned. These areas lack paved roads, drainage systems, and solid waste collection points. The World Bank, working with the Dar Es Salaam City Council, is preparing to improve urban infrastructure, but needs the help of citizens and urban planning students to identify where road side drainage is clogged, overflowing and needing repair.

A network of students and residents already exists in Tandale, one of the target wards for this projects.  In August, they created a base layer map that is accessible on Open Street Map.  These groups are keen to put to use mobile applications that help make the base map more accessible and useful.