Data Journalism Application and Road Safety in Ghana
By Mawutodzi Abissath
“Thou shall not kill” is one of the biblical injunctions of the Ten Commandments. The implication is that if you kill someone, you commit a crime also known as murder. And murder is a felony for which, when convicted, the offender is liable to life imprisonment or pay the ultimate price - death.Yet, in Ghana a reckless drunk driver can take about 45 passengers in a rickety moving coffin and murder them in a twinkle of any eye and go scot free. Why? Because that kind of murder is referred to as traffic or road accident. This is what is termed as “Free Murder on our Roads.”
From Wednesday, 24th to Friday, 26th October, 2012, over 200 selected Ghanaian journalists and web developers participated in a three-day Data Journalism Boot camp here in Accra. This writer defines tempted to interpret “Data Journalism” as “Collaborative Journalism” to suit his purpose.
Basically, the bootcamp was a hands-on training programme, using team-based project work where journalists collaborate with IT technicians, especially developers, designers as well as civic activists to use public data to build experimental civic media applications such as websites, or services. The principal objective is to empower ordinary citizens with facts and figures to better appreciate the world around them to fight for their rights when need be.
It has been established that since the advent of Information Communication Technology (ICT) which transformed the world into a miniature community, journalism is one profession that has been revolutionised beyond compare. It first metamorphosed from traditional journalism to e-journalism, or online journalism, or cyber-journalism.
Then, while in transit, the profession experienced what is known as “citizen journalism,” with its resultant by-products such as blogging, vlogging, flikr, Facebook, Twitter, Word Press, YouTube etc, all capsule in what is now known as “Social Media,”
Today we are talking of “Data journalism” or “Data Literacy.” The world is so opening up that the amount of information and data available to the public for analysis, decision-making and action is mind-boggling.
But to be able to decipher and interpret the mounting data resources for the benefit of society, journalists need some basic data wrangling technical skills. That was the essence of the boot camp in Ghana.
Records show that the Data Journalism bootcamp was pioneered by the African Media Initiative (AMI) and the World Bank Institute (WBI) in Kenya in January 2012 and delivered in other places like Uganda and South Africa.
The Ghana edition of the bootcamp was jointly organised by the Ghana Open Data Initiation (GODI) of the National Information Technology (NITA), AMI, Google, and WBI. After the first day of tutorial, participants broke into five groups and had a very limited time to develop and present their project works within 48 hours. And the final product was expected to be practical and beneficial to society.
In reality, it was impossible to master Data Journalism as a subject matter in 72 hours. So the course was intensive and the project work very competitive indeed! At one stage tension in the computer lab was so high that some group members virtually turned themselves into detectives, going round to spy on what others were up to. Others were deliberately or otherwise pulling plugs here and there to cause artificial blackouts in their competitors’ camp.
In fact, the event was like a football gala match between Hearts and Kotoko. In some groups, heated arguments ensued among group members themselves where voices were flying across the room like ‘unseen objects.’ It was all pressure without animosity, really!
In the end all project works were found to be very productive and creative indeed! The first award winning project was on the corruption in the Extractive Industry entitled, “WHERE OUR MONEY DEY?” It questioned how royalties are paid by mining companies but hardly reached ordinary people in the mining communities.
Nonetheless, the best top-four project works were awarded cash prizes pegged between
$1,500 to $250. The prizes were sponsored by the GODI, AMI, WBI and Google. Mr. Craig Hammer of WBI and Mr. Justin Arenstein of AMI said they were highly impressed by the performance of participants in view of the fact that Data Literacy Bootcamp was being held in Ghana for the first time. All participants received Certificates instantly. But hard cash was yet to enter any pockets.
Dr. Nii Quanor, a veteran Ghanaian IT expert of international repute and current Chairman of NITA Board, took personal interest in the training course to ensure the success of the programme despite some technical challenges at the venue. Mr. William Tevie, Director-General, NITA, Mr. Eric Akumiah, GODI Project Coordinator and others under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications played pivotal roles to place Ghana on the world map of Data Journalism.
Road Safety Technology
The object of this piece is to share with the general public the highlights of one of the award winning group project works. The Group, simply referred to as Safety Group took a quick look at the socio-economic havoc road accidents had caused and continues to cause the nation for the ten year period 2000 – 2010.
The project itself was dubbed Nanty Yie meaning safe journey. With reliable data sourced from the National Road Safety Commission, the Police and the Ghana National Fire Service, the journalists in the group wrote a story while the IT technicians used geospatial technology to provide graphical illustrations indicating accident-prone stops along various roads on the map of Ghana.
Research showed that in 2001, Ghana was rated as the second highest road traffic accident-prone nation among six West African countries, with 73 deaths per 1000 accidents. Over 11,291 road accidents occurred in 2001 with 1,660 fatalities. This figure slightly decreased to 10, 715 in 2002 with 1,665 fatalities. Though road accidents further declined to 10,644 in 2003, fatalities shot up to 11, 7 15 over the period under review.
Ghana records about 10,000 fatal road traffic accidents, every year, out of which 1,600 people perished while 15,000, were seriously injured, robbing the nation of critical human resource. Some accident victims die or become incapacitated, to the detriment of national development.
Further, Ghana loses an amount of GH¢165,000, representing 1.6% of its GDP yearly, in solving problems such as medical expenses of victims, damage to vehicles and insurance cost among others. The World Health Organisation (WHO)’s records show that Ghana lost about 2% of her GDP annually due to road accidents.
In 2009 Greater Accra with the highest vehicle population in the country, saw the highest trend in road accident fatalities. Some of the accident prone Towns in the region include Accra, Akuse Junction, Ayimensa, Sege, Oyarifa, Ada and Madina.
The Upper West Region also with the least vehicle population, in 2000 recorded the lowest road accidents with a few hot spots like Goli, Nadoko and Lawara.
Research indicates that the Ashanti Region has its own peculiar problems when it comes to road accidents. Being the second largest city with large number of vehicles, it stands next to the Greater Accra with total road accidents of 12,299 in 2009.
Some accident prone towns in the Region are Juaso, Asankare, Ohene Nkwanta, Mampong and Tepa Junction. Brong Ahafo Region on the other hand, has only Tanoso near Sunyani as an accident prone area.
The Central Region is another geographical area in the country where towns like Komanda Junction, Shama Junction and Yamoransa Junction are notoriously noted for road accidents. In 2000, for instance, the region recorded road accident deaths of 509 which increased to 1,026 in 2004.
But one worrying phenomenon observed about Ghana is that some of the worse traffic accidents were recorded on some of the good roads, especially in the Greater Accra region. A typical example is the US $547 million Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) funded 14.1km N1 Highway commissioned by the late President John Evans Atta Mills and former President John Agyakum Kufuor in February this year. Fifteen (15) accidents with huge losses of life and property were recorded on the George Bush Motorway within the first of month of its commissioning .
Road Alert Application
In order to supplement the efforts of the National Road Safety Commission and other stake holders in road safety activities in the country, the Safety Group at the Data Journalism bootcamp came up with an innovative application known as App for Road Alert.
The Group developed the NANTI- YIE Application, downloadable on any smart phone, Android device that alerts motorists when approaching accident prone-areas by means of the GEO location. The philosophy is prevention is better than cure.
The red spots in this map indicate accident prone areas..
The safety Application is also intended to fire a call message to emergency services like the Police, the Fire Service, and the Ambulance services along a particular road where accident may occur etc. The Safety Group has also developed a web App and mobile web for the benefit of the travelling public.
It is expected that the Road Safety authorities will explore this innovative technology to help prevent accidents on our roads. There is a Ghanaian traditional adage which says: “He who brings you roads brings you life.” Thus, it is the view of the Safety Group that if roads are supposed to bring life then the same roads must not be allowed to lead to death.
The writer is Deputy Director/Head of IT at the Information Services Department, Accra
Contact: abissath@gmail.com
The core causes of road accident in Ghana are simple yet the issues of road safety are complex. The unfair blame of reckless driving of drivers MUST sometimes be shifted to those who design and/or build the roads as well as those who authorise both vehicles and drivers to utilize the roads. The huge potholes of our roads, vanished road makings and signage as well poor junction visibility as a result of 'bill boards' are some of the BASIC problems of reckless driving.
ReplyDeleteMost transport engineers realise that when roads are well maintained, there is a high likelihood of high usage, hence, the higher possibility of road accidents. Perchance, that is why some roads in the urban areas are left to go BAD.
If we want to use data, as an up and coming road safety analyst/engineer, I will say that the information given must be well recorded. If there was an accident, what was the state of the car, did the passengers have access to seat belts and what was the visibility on the road.
I applaud this idea of data and encourage its modification and innovation.
My advice is that if we are going to collect data, then we have to make sure that we gather what we need. Data is a very dangerous ally yet it is also a formidable enemy should you get it wrong.