Scaling-up Disruptive Technologies for Road Safety in Mozambique and Liberia

Featured GRSF Grant Activity: Scaling-up Disruptive Technologies for Road Safety in Mozambique and Liberia

The World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), in collaboration with Governments of Mozambique and Liberia, has been working on the development of an innovative road safety assessment methodology using automated image analysis technology.

This project aims to develop a tool to assess a road safety risk from video filming, using the automated image analysis technology. A commercial digital camera is used for filming roads so that anybody can easily survey and assess at a minimum cost.

The pilots in Mozambique and Liberia (500km each) were conducted and road safety risks were identified on these road sections. The software will be open source and can be used freely.

GRSF in Action ⌵︎

• With GRSF’s support, a road safety risk assessment tool was developed

• 1000 km of national roads in Mozambique and Liberia were evaluated

• GRSF's investment directly leveraged additional funding in Mozambique: The ongoing Word Bank IPF (Integrated Feeder Road Development Project) plans to finance the interventions to enhance road safety in the high risk sections identified by this study.

Capacity Building  ⌵︎

The Workshops on Road Safety Risk Assessment Tool were held in Maputo, Mozambique and Monrovia, Liberia in May 2019. The workshops provided training of the tool and disseminated the results of the pilot assessments. These were attended by 40 participants from the road agencies in both countries.

After the activity, all trainees have demonstrated to be able to carry out the road risk assessment using the developed software.

Awards  ⌵︎

The project’s team received the President’s Awards for Innovation, recognizing the development of results through the creation and adoption of innovations across World Bank operations as well as client countries.

This project of road safety risk assessment tool development is supported by UK Aid and the World Bank through the GRSF.

Project’s team: Kulwinder Singh Rao, Satoshi Ogita, Leslie N. Mills, and Damon C. Luciano.