CitizenTract

City - zen - Track

Polytechnique Hackathon 2019

Inspiration

Montreal's excessive number of construction sites cause avoidable delays and suspicion from the perspective of tax payers, who essentially are the one's financing these projects. Our mobile application serves to better inform people of the sites around them, using information that most people did not know the general public had access to and allow them to report new or wrongly reported sites they see.

What it does

It integrates the google maps api to locate every construction site around you given the Montreal construction site data available on the city's website. You also also the possibility to get a list view for more details like the company, the budget, how long will this be going on, etc.

This app can motivate greater optimization of google maps/waze navigation platforms by giving them greater levels of detail when it comes to certain road hazards, can project when regular routes will be available (by using the projected end dates of the projects)

How we built it

CitizenTract helps you be more informed about the construction sites in your city. It is composed of an API and a cross platform mobile application. The API, built using KoaJs is used to gather the data from the canadian government website. The data is then consumed by the mobile application built with Flutter. This application integrates google maps to show the geolocalized position of the sites. you also have the option to see more details with a list. Details include the company, the budget, how long will this be going on, etc.

Challenges

We faced issues with learning the various frameworks used to implement the solution. Deploying the API and getting the data from the government were also challenging.

Strategy Plan

The data needs to be recorded whenever a new construction work begins. The budget that is allocated, the name of the constructor undertaking the construction, the approximate completion date, how the construction will affect the environment and traffic, etc. With this in coming years we'll have the information about all the new works. How fast this application can be deployed for the use of citizens depends on whether the government is able to provide the datasets for the ongoing construction works. If they can provide the application can be deployed within a year, otherwise there is no option but to wait for the completion of all the ongoing projects. This idea can later be expanded to include the details of other festivals, events and services where the government is spending the tax money.