[A]dvanced [R]esearch in

[G]overnment [O]perations
S.Q.U.I.D. Pilot Proposal

In a nutshell: ARGO Labs bridges the worlds

of established public administration and exciting civic data science to demonstrate how
to deliver public services more efficiently, effectively, and imaginatively. ARGOs Street
Quality Identification Device (SQUID) easily mounts on vehicles to passively provide rich
street quality data that ARGO will classify
and map through a robust analytical pipeline.

Vision zero potholes

From orbital to escape velocity
What would it take to get to zero potholes in New York City? Thats a bold aspirational goal,
yet it helps clarify the opportunity SQUID presents. NYCs current 311 based pothole locating
system benefits from a low cost reporting techology (simple phone calls) yet at best can only
ever operationalize reactions to existing potholes that citizens and city inspectors find. That
paradigm makes it exceedingly tough to get ahead of ongoing road deterioration and what Lucius Riccio calls Orbital Velocity.

Orbital Velocity

SQUID offers a new low cost opportunity to passively collect a comprehensive street quality
dataset by leveraging two key technology trends. The dramatic growth in smart phones usage
globally the past few years has driven accelerometer, camera, and gps components an order of
magnitude cheaper. Modern image classification techniques benefit greatly from large datasets to
train machine learning models. Together these trends position SQUID to provide the worlds
first automatically updating citywide street quality map. By knowing not only where potholes
are but where potential street defects will likely arise, NYC can achieve Escape Velocity.

Escape Velocity

S.Q.U.I.D. Overview
Automated Pothole Mapping
Street maintenance is one of the a most visible examples of local government performance.

-Fund for the City of New Yorks Center on Municipal Government Performance
ARGO has built a low-cost sensor platform to passively measure street surface quality using an accelerometer and added a camera to be able to literally see the ground truth.
ARGO has field tested SQUID in Brooklyn & Hoboken and built interactive dashboards for NYC
Technology Development Corporation Executive Director Bob Richardson and Smart Cities author
Anthony Townsend. ARGO has also demonstrated this technology to the Mayors Office of Operations
in NYC and has discussed implementation in Los Angeles with the Citys Chief Data Officer, Abhi
Nemani.
This data discovery will enable richer street quality maps and improved street maintenance operations.
Fixing potholes today is a game of whack-a-mole as cities are reactive than proactive about fixing
potholes. SQUID enables a comprehensive map of a citys street surface quality, transforming the the
existing paradigm.
As NYC Deputy Commissioner Canisi testified in Dept of Transportation v. Coppola, the most time

SQUID

Cobble Hill
Experiment

used in pothole repair isnt actually making the repairs, its the traveling. Once they get to a complaint
location they fix all the potholes on that street section. What if the adjacent area has street defects that
no one bothered to report in? Road crews could be routed to another street far away and spend unnecessary time in traffic. There is suboptimal situational awareness for a problem that the city is committing
$310.1 million dollars to. Our approach offers a new way to tackle that enduring challenge.
Citizens can still report potholes via 311 yet the distributed SQUID sensor network can augment those
community prioritized complaints with ground truth street quality information. Past and current
alternative road imaging efforts use expensive, intrusive and ominous looking military grade sensors that
overengineers the issue - knowing where the potholes are! ARGO built a good enough platform that
enables improved decision making and optimized routing decisions to fix potholes faster. We welcome
opportunities to pilot this system at scale in NYC.

Pilot Implementation
Initial experiment and long term goals
ARGOs proposed initial city fleet vehicle pilot involves putting a dozen SQUID sensors in as many
vehicles for a month and using that data to scope a comprehensive New York Citywide pothole map.
Logistics - SQUID mounts in the trunk of the Prius. The camera extends from inside the trunk and is
positioned adjacent to the Prius backup camera.

Image 1 (L): SQUID fitted on the trunk of the Prius

Image 2 (C): The camera placed adjacent to the Prius backup camera
Image 3 (R): SQUID mounting with the trunk closed
Wifi docking - In order to retrieve the data, we assume that all DOT cars return to a home base which
has wifi connectivity. When SQUIDS return-to-base, they detect the wifi and transmit data to a central
server. As an alternative, we could use 4G connectivity though the data transfer costs will not be entirely
trivial (on the order of a hundred plus dollars a SQUID a month).
Goals - By the end of 2015, ARGO aims to build a comprehensive street surface quality map of NYC
like the simulated one below and pipeline to automate the task of identifying street quality issues. More
than data and analytics, the goal ultimately is better service delivery and we will measure progress by
improvements in street quality.

Simulated NYC
Pothole Map
Metrics - Measure pothole reporting to filling timeline and aggregate filling dfficiency. Measure cost savings for city agencies and citizens using the roads. Measure overall street quality and citizen satisfaction
with NYCs roads.

Why SQUID is different

ARGO is currently pursuing 501(c)3 nonprofit status and is a mission focused organization. Were in
this to bridge the gap between whats currently possible with todays digital tools and established public administration practices. Furthermore, with this street quality mapping, ARGO has stayed highly
focused on a low cost device that can work with the citys existing vehicle fleet.
Unlike citizen reported pothole data, SQUID combines accelerometer with imagery data to provide
both a much more robust method of tracking potholes and more comprehensive metric of street quality.
And unlike highly engineered laser based system, SQUID offers a low cost sensor with the potential to
passively collect data from the Citys vehicle fleet. That enables the City to not just have a one off map
but a longitudinal dataset of street quality.
As former NYC transportation commissioner Lucius Riccio says, Fixing potholes means the smart thing
hasnt been done, which is to do the work that prevents them in the first place. We can strategically
tackle that preventative maintenance question by exploring how todays street defect SQUID data signature correlates to what was observed 3 months ago or a year ago or longer as SQUID matures.
That process of research and refinement will lead to greater understanding of street quality and how to
proactively manage potholes before they even arise. Thats the sort of strategy to achieve our big aspirational goal: New York, the first city in the world to achieve zero potholes.

Device

Open source rasberry pi stack costing less than

$200 a device.

Data

Estimate a total of 1.5 to 2 million images totalling 500 - 700 GB or $30 a month a device.

Decisions

Analytical pipeline and street quality dashboard that ARGO develops with the City.

Device

Decisions
Data

Team ARGO
Civically savvy data scientists
Founding Team
We are graduate students at NYUs CUSP (Center for Urban Science and Progress), an urban informatics academic program in New York City, with well over two decades of combined experience working in
data intensive roles. We respect the past and are eager students of history.
We know how to distinguish a novel app from the genuinely new and understand that local context is
critical for achieving real reform, as GK Chesterton eloquently elucidates in his parable of a fence. Our
vision is to leverage the dramatic maturation of the digital revolution and work with local governments
to tackle age-old wicked, civic challenges.
We have a deep appreciation for the panoply of factors -- political, economic, social, cultural -- that
contextualize public problems and understand when specialization can be a barrier rather than a tool.
We believe civic data science has created a new frontier for governmental operations and are excited to
do our part to pioneer that potential.

Organizational Adviser
Dr. Neil Kleiman is a clinical professor at New York University, teaching graduate-level courses on policy development, urban innovation, and new approaches
to technology and big data at both the Wagner School of Public Service and the
Center for Urban Science and Progress. Kleiman has spent 20 years building a
career at the intersection of many sectorspolicy, philanthropy, government and
academia. He began his career as the founding director of the Center for an Urban
Future, a 501c3 nonprofit based at 120 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. He has
written and edited over thirty policy reports, and his work has been featured in
many media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
Chronicle of Higher Education and National Public Radio.

ARGO aims to pioneer a new public administration

paradigm that is creative, adaptive and digitally
native to better position cities everywhere to address
pressing public challenges.