Open Data Labs - Web Foundation

  • Labs
  • Blog
  • Projects
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • English
    • Indonesia

DARU: Firefighting at your fingertips

March 30, 2017 by Open Data Labs Leave a Comment

OpenCities_Banner
Original photo from the Diary of a Hotel Addict, CC BY 2.0. Colour and add-on modifications by the Open Data Lab Jakarta.

The hype around “Smart Cities” has influenced discussions on urbanism worldwide. Locally in Indonesia, the concept of smart cities is becoming more popular and cities across the country are starting to integrate and harness technology for more efficient and smarter public administration. However, more often than not, smart city approaches fail to provide room for citizen participation in the policy-making process.

At Open Data Lab Jakarta, we believe that the power of technology alone is not sufficient to make cities more sustainable and fitting for everyone – we need technology combined with citizen participation and open data. Following this belief, in June 2016 we launched an innovative project called “Innovating for Open Cities”, with the support of Making All Voices Count . The initiative aimed to turn cities into “people-centred smart cities”.

We worked with our outstanding partners to change the trend from smart cities to “open cities”. Through a series of interviews, we’ve captured the experience of our partners as they delved in this project, and now we’re ready to share what they’ve said!

Read on for our interview with Puja Pramudya, Chief Technology Officer at Radya Labs. Together with us, Radya Labs developed an innovative system named DARU, which aims to help the Jakarta Fire Department improve their public service delivery in firefighting by utilising a system that is based on open data.

Q: Hi Puja, DARU seems like a useful system, could you tell us a little more about it?

A: Yes it’s very useful indeed! DARU is designed by Radya Labs to modernise the Jakarta Fire Department’s rescue operations. It brings all necessary information in real-time, integrates data from other parties and visualises the rescue plan. So, the fire department personnel can have a bird’s eye view of the rescue operations in the field and all necessary information will be at their fingertips in real-time.

Q: What was the necessity that drove the development of this system? What motivated you to develop DARU?

A: Right now, Jakarta’s firefighting operations function in an old fashion way – using paper/radio communication for coordination. The manual conduct hinders them from getting real-time information relating to vehicle movement and availability; delayed communication often occurs and leads to more casualties and higher potential of fire hazards, which is very dangerous especially in a densely populated urban area like Jakarta.

Q: Tell us what has gone well—what are your successes with DARU?

A: DARU is shaping up really well. We developed a system prototype that the Fire Department can already use, which consists of two main components. The first component is Android tablets equipped with a software called “On-Board Unit App” placed inside fire trucks, that will enable sending out real-time information from the field. The second component is a VTS (Vehicle Tracking System) that enables the Fire Department Command Center to visualise all information received from the fire trucks, location of the fire incidents, and information of hydrant and fire post location all over Jakarta extracted from the Jakarta Smart City (JSC) portal.

What I consider as a big success is, because of DARU, there is a collaboration formed between two government agencies, namely the Jakarta Fire Department and the Jakarta Smart City (JSC). At first, we developed this system for the internal use of the Jakarta Fire Department, but then the JSC saw this and now they plan to integrate the information obtained from this platform to help them develop a service app, that will deliver immediate information – such as disaster alerts to Jakarta citizens. Isn’t this something that we should celebrate?!

Q: You collaborated with various stakeholders. How did they respond to your initiative?

A: The responses are massively positive. Since DARU brings a lot of valuable improvements (to Jakarta’s firefighting operations), everything will be easily controlled through the system and it levels up the Fire Department’s capacity to provide better public service. They even prioritised DARU development as part of their programme.

We also showcased our work at the Jakarta Smart City Office—I was really surprised to see how our presentation drew such a crowd. We first met the Jakarta Smart City team back in 2015, when we became one of the finalist of HackJak – a hackathon event organised by Hivos that utilised datasets from Jakarta’s open data portal. I am happy and proud to see that our good relationship with Jakarta Smart City has developed into such an amazing achievement.

Q: Could you summarise your whole experience working in developing DARU and being a part of the Innovating for Open Cities project?

A: I would say it’s a tremendous personal experience for me to be able to contribute my expertise. I’m an IT business guy, and my team develops software mostly for the private sector. I wasn’t accustomed to building software for a social purpose like this.

But joining the Innovating for Open Cities project shaped my social participation senses by helping me learn to see problems through a more social perspective. This revelation opened a whole new world for me. I’m excited to get involved more in the future.

Q: What challenges did you encounter along the way and how did you manage to solve them?

A: The most vivid challenge is implementing the software in the real world, especially since it’s related to disaster and rescue operations. The devil is in the details. The problem was that endless options kept appearing. At first, we planned to develop a citizen-centred channel where the public can request and obtain services from the Fire Department, but after a series of discussions we found that creating a new channel would be unnecessary because there are several available channels for that already, such as the 112 Hotline. Besides that, developing a new channel will require massive socialisation with the public, which was not possible to do in a short time.

Thankfully, I received full support from the Open Data Lab Jakarta in terms of guidance. Especially during the incubation sessions, which helped my team to stay focused and disciplined. Aside from that, we also received constructive advice that helped with the completion of the project.

Q: What’s your future plan for DARU?

A: We will work with the Jakarta Smart City Office and the Fire Department to establish formal working relationships to finish this project. Additionally, we will try to offer this solution to other cities and work with the private sector to expand our user base.
Thank you Puja and Radya Labs for taking part in making Jakarta work for its citizens!

Filed Under: Blog, Innovating for Open Cities, Jakarta Lab, Projects Tagged With: DARU, innocities, innovation, Open cities, radya labs, smart cities

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Archives

  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • March 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014

Jln. Kudus No. 3, Menteng, Jakarta 10310           @ODLabJkt           Open Data Lab Jakarta           Open Data Lab Jakarta          Privacy Policy


© 2008–2023 World Wide Web Foundation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.