The Housing and Transportation Group has met and discussed key technologies and pain points throughout this past week. We are now setting concrete goals for each week and trying to design a holistic solution that targets the major pain points of the citizens of Vizag. We presented the initial version of the solution to Professor Darwin and are now working with some of the feedback we got. As mentioned in the previous week’s update, we aim to make an application that leverages the people of Vizag and the infrastructure that is already present. This will include a multimodal, single-payment card system—much like the Clipper card – as well as an integrated app that allows users to report traffic violations and city related issues in a digital format. Users will receive points for using transportation infrastructure at off-peak hours, for reporting traffic violations, and for identifying infrastructural issues within the city. These points can then be claimed for transportation credit (also managed through the same card and app system) or for retail gift cards. Using case studies from cities around the world, we hope to deliver a turn-key solution that paves the way for future technologies to replace the out-dated infrastructure of Vizag.

That being said, the second part of our approach builds off of what many of the class speakers have talked about recently. We need to target not 5 years ahead but rather 50 years ahead, and then come up with a phase-by-phase approach to reach our targets. Our group has now started to discuss revolutionary futuristic technologies that may not have been implemented or tested on a large scale yet. These include metro systems like the Hyperloop, driver-less cars derived from the Google Car and Uber platform, and even parking-free transportation infrastructure in newly developed neighborhoods and some technologies invented by our teammates. We are working on our mid-point review presentation, and designing it such that we touch on the basics of the overall solution we are designing. We hope that this will allow us to receive feedback directly relevant to folks on the ground in the city, so that we can modify our solution before the final presentation at the end of the semester.

The Housing/Transportation Group

Gautham Kesineni, Isabel Viegas De Lima, Helen Fan, Avanishree Kanoria, Aridam Kumar