Development of a mobile application for road incident reporting in Kenya

Date
2016
Authors
Ngichabe, John Kulova
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Road users lack a medium where they can report road incidents and complaints directly to the authorities concerned. The authorities lack concrete evidence to solve road incidents since there is no proper road incident reporting system. Road incidents happen everywhere but the witnesses to these road incidents lack a convenient and efficient method to report them. The frequency of road incidents that go unnoticed in Kenya is on the rise especially the hit and run incidents. Since there is no medium to report them, they go unaccounted for and hence the parties responsible are never held responsible. The witnesses to road incidents would rather leave the incident to chance rather than walking to the authorities responsible to report it because they have no convenience of reporting these incidents at the touch of a button. With the increase of smart phones in Kenya, an opportunity exists because of the untapped gap of incident reporting. The proposed solution was to develop a mobile application that can be used to report road incidents. The mobile application was developed on the Android platform. It was developed concurrently with a web application developed in PHP and JavaScript languages to supplement its functionality. The testing of the application was successful and it was strongly agreed by the respondents that the system would be effective in reporting road incidents. Thus the mobile application comes in handy to provide a solution to the way users report road incidents. The recommendations made by users were used to improve the application. The application will allow users to report incidents that happen on the roads. Based on the overall statistics of user testing and evaluation, it is safe to say that the application fulfills its simplicity and usability requirement. Based on the questionnaire responses, the application is generally considered easy to understand and use. The implication of the results of application testing is that the application will come in handy in reporting road incidents thus improving road safety.
Description
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Mobile Telecommunications and Innovation (MSc. MTI)
Keywords
Road accident, Mobile application, Accident reporting, Kenya, Report, Web application
Citation