Signal3-What Happens to Maps during the Hurricane Florence?
Transit-smart apps like Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps are getting popular nowadays. Not only they offer real-time data and transit information, but also crowd-sourced events that contributed by other users, such as pot-holes, police, or even stopped cars on the shoulder of the road. These pieces of information turn out to be very helpful and they are easily accessible by everyone. However, during the event of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Florence, the real-time event feeds were not able to keep up with the pace of the development of new road emergencies. (Tran, 2018) As the road conditions change pretty quickly during such events, the crew of Waze isn’t able to send out all the updates in a timely manner.
Apps like Waze or Google Map has billions of users, and people rely heavily on them for making transit decisions. Any information they provide would impact a large group of people and significantly influence their decisions. Thus, they have a crucial role in guiding people to nearby shelters by offering a secure and accessible route in the event of a hurricane, flash flood, and earthquake, etc.
As the apps are doing a proactive role in emergency events, we can better and improve these apps in several approaches. Firstly, information should be made instantly available to the public if possible. In recognition of the nature of a crowd-sourcing based app, accuracy and truthfulness of the data may sometimes be debatable. However, timing is more crucial under certain instances and it could be the top priority. Secondly, achieving a higher level of machine learning of the data will save lots of manpower and cost. Instead of placing a 150-people monitoring team which is practiced by INRIX, the cost and number of people stationed can be greatly reduced.
Bibliography
Tran, C. (2018, September 24). After the Storm, a Flood of Data. Retrieved from CityLab: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/09/after-the-storm-a-flood-of-data/570640/
