IIT Madras plans ‘Hackcidents’

The year-long hackathon being in response to an appeal from the police

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the Centre for Innovation have proposed to conduct a year-long hackathon “hackcidents”. The best ideas on road safety and accident prevention from the event would be implemented.

The hackathon follows an appeal from the State police to assist them with innovative ideas and solutions to tackle growing traffic issues.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Kapil Kumar C. Saratkar, who was participating in an event on Saturday in the institute, said although 4,500 traffic police were deployed to manage the city traffic, there was still manpower shortage. He requested the IIT M students to provide simple innovations and solutions.

Pact signed

At the event, an agreement was signed between Renault Nissan Technology and Business Centre India and the institute’s Connected Intelligent Urban Transportation laboratory to develop data-driven, innovative solutions to reduce road accident fatalities in the city and its neighbouring districts. The project would focus on reducing fatal accidents involving public transport buses through sensors and data collection techniques. The former was contributing to the institute as part of its CSR.

Institute director V. Kamakoti said the initiative would benefit the transportation sector. The project would generate data and pave the way for new technologies that would enhance entrepreneurship ideas, he said.

The first project aim was to focus on reducing fatal accidents involving public transit buses in the city. In 2019, buses caused more than 80 fatalities, which was over 10% of the fatal accidents in the city. Nearly 100 accidents resulted in grievous injuries. Apart from high pay out in terms of claims, the accidents had large social costs.

The project proposed to use state-of-the-art sensors and data collection techniques to better understand what led to bus accidents and propose innovative ways to significantly reduce them.

Gitakrishnan Ramadurai, principal investigator for the projects and associate professor of transportation engineering division, said the projects would combine advanced sensor technology with cutting edge data analytics to design cost-effective solutions to address road safety.

The second project would focus on low-cost innovative technology to prevent accidents in Chennai, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu.