Inspiration
Have you ever been on a city street and thought, “Why hasn’t anyone fixed this pothole?” Roads are often neglected, repairs take too long, and citizens feel powerless. PotholeGO was inspired by the idea of empowering communities to actively improve city infrastructure, turning everyday observations into actionable solutions.
What it does
PotholeGO lets users:
Snap or upload photos of road issues.
Pin their location on an interactive map.
Get AI-powered analysis of severity and recommended next steps.
See heatmaps, clusters, and prioritized reports.
Earn points, streaks, and badges by reporting and verifying issues.
Help city officials receive ready-to-action repair tickets.
In short, it’s Waze for road repairs — combining crowdsourcing, AI, and gamification to make cities safer.
How we built it
Frontend: Streamlit for a responsive web app and mobile-friendly camera input.
Backend: SQLite for storing reports, users, and votes; threaded notifications via email.
AI: Google Gemini for image analysis, severity scoring, and auto-generated repair tickets.
Visualization: Folium + HeatMap for interactive maps and clustering of reported issues.
Gamification: Points, streaks, badges, and leaderboards to engage users.
Challenges we ran into
Integrating real-time map interactions with image uploads.
Designing a priority scoring system combining AI severity, user votes, and recency.
Handling multi-device users and temporary session states for pending reports.
Balancing AI fallback vs. Gemini API for demo vs. production.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Fully functional end-to-end reporting pipeline from citizen input to AI analysis.
Interactive maps with heatmaps, clusters, and predictive urgency scoring.
Gamification layer that motivates user engagement and trust-building.
Auto-generated repair tickets that could be integrated into city workflows.
What we learned
Real-world civic tech requires balancing user experience, AI insights, and actionable outputs.
Community engagement can be gamified without sacrificing usability.
Mapping and clustering spatial data in real-time is both challenging and rewarding.
Streamlit + AI APIs provide a rapid prototyping environment for hackathons.
What's next for PotholeGO
Enable multi-city scalability with cloud DB support.
Add real-time notifications and mobile push alerts for urgent reports.
Expand to other civic issues: streetlights, sidewalks, debris, etc.
Improve AI models for more accurate severity and repair predictions.
Launch a leaderboard challenge mode for schools and local communities.
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