The aim of this project is to find the shortest and fastest driving routes to the University of the Gambia, Kanifing South. Kanifing is the center for many industries and workplaces, so there is always a traffic jam. The university’s early morning classes start at 8 am, so many students miss half of the morning classes because of traffic congestion and limited road connections. For example, I live 11 kilometers away from the Knaifing campus and it takes me approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to my 8 am morning class because of traffic which is supposed to take about 16 minutes.
Maps.Me directions of my route to school estimating a 16 minute drive time
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was not able to work with my team to collect images on the selected area for the project. So, I narrowed the area down to where there were already images uploaded to Mapillary that I could work on. I also contacted local residents virtually for help with naming streets and features like sidewalks and one-way routes.
Photo of me taking images in my community to add to Mapillary
The initial project aim before the pandemic was to map the whole of Kanifing streets to name them and add attributes. Connected YouthMappers (University of Gambia YouthMappers chapter) plans to continue this project in collaboration with the Kanifing Municipal Council and USAID.
Since my project was focused on finding the shortest and fastest routes to the University of the Gambia, I reached out to the university’s Public Relations Department. They are working on embedding a street-level imagery viewer and map on the university website, by using the JavaScript image integration in WebGL from my project, so students will be able to get the fastest routes to the campus. Students can also find my work on Mapillary and OSM tools, there is also a description of my project on Mapillary’s website blog posts.