Developing citizen based crowd sourced mobile GIS for Open Power Emergency Reporting and Awareness (OPERA) System

Abstract

Today, Power Grid Risks and Hazard reporting along the power lines are purely done by the staff and very little by the citizens through call center toll free lines, SMSs and Web contact-us forms that lack spatial component and this is not good enough. Literature studies in this thesis, together with earlier works by the other authors have suggested that the Power Grid Risks and Hazard reporting along the power lines needs a digital tool for such reporting. The aim of the thesis has thus been to design and develop a mobile GIS system for An open client-server system enabling members of the public use a mobile Android based client (smartphone application) to report electrical power grid emergencies like accidents and faults via the internet. This reported information is sent to a server back-end with Umeme as custodians who are to respond based on optimally computed and Geospatial/GIS aggregation techniques for prioritized resource allocation.