SafeJourney

Our projects show the safety condition of diffferent path

Inspiration

As a team of international students at UofT, we all faced the struggle of navigating the city when we first got here. While Google Maps is reliable in producing an efficient path, it isn't always the safest or most commonly used. We wanted to design a map that included safety features so users are informed of the paths they are taking beforehand.

What it does

The idea is to allow public reviews of each street on the map, similar to how Google Maps does with restaurants. We then compile these ratings and display them of each street on a possible path towards the destination with red, yellow, and green line segments indicating 2, 3, and 4 stars respectively. Users can filter out streets based on their safety rating to find their desired pathway. Additionally, the map displays information on recent crime occurred at each location as well as streetlight locations to give users a more informed decision.

How we built it

Our scope for our project was around the campus of UofT as well as pathways to residential areas where students resided. To define each pathway, we utilized ArcGIS, an online map making software and mapped out the streets of Toronto, separating streets at each junction by tracing over streets with modifiable line segments. This way, we can change the colour of every part of the street between an intersection for more accurate display.

As a proof of concept, we also created a Figma interactive map with toggleable filters for our map display. Our map is separated into multiple layers - a layer each with the red, yellow, and green rated roads, and additional layer for each type of popup such as streetlights to allow customization of the UI. Finally, we showed what the rating system as well as news display functions would look like when a user selects on a street or popup.

Challenges we ran into

During the planning phase, we were challenged on assign a combined safety rating based on many factors such as recent incidents, the number of people using each road, user ratings, so we decided to separate them into separate toggle-able menu options. For the implementation of the map, we tried utilizing repositories for python interactive maps, but we were unable to add interact-able visuals on a website as we didn't have experience with HTML and CSS. We found ArcGIS from the Toronto Police Service maps where we were getting the database for recent incidents that occurred, and were able to utilize that as our map hosting platform instead.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of our idea of creating a safe map as safety is a very practical issue that all of us run into this problem in our daily lives. Additionally, having user rated roads allows our map doesn't only apply to safety, but also highlights roads that the general population is not familiar with, which indicates underused areas to potentially avoid. We believe our map design is quite user friendly in of navigating around and filtering information.

What we learned

Through with unfamiliar software such as ArcGIS and Figma, we improved our technical skills in presenting data through visualization and developing a user friendly UI, separating different layers of data as way to enable filtering options. We learned to integrate existing resources into our project and upload data from open sources into our interactive map.

What's next for Untitled

Currently, we have not implemented a way to take in user input yet, and the current rating of the map is mostly neutral, aside from the roads we are familiar with using. We are hoping to push the actual implement of our design into a mobile accessible application or extension as the majority of users will be using maps on their phones. To expand the scope of our project, we would require partnerships with city planners in order to map out every street efficiently as well as keep the map updated.