Japanese NGO makes a game of citizen collected infrastructure damage reports: “Guardians of Steel and Concrete”. The first task was called “Manhole Crusade”. By locating and taking photos of manholes players earn tokens. These tokens will eventually be redeemable in real life.
Gamers are asked to rate the manhole cover by quality and the reports are sent to city engineers for maintenance. When tested in the Tokyo ward Shibuya the 10,500 manholes were documented in 3 days. It would have taken many years for city engineers to complete the same task.
Japan as a whole has 10 million manholes. This game makes maintaining them exponentially cheaper. The next step is utility poles. The game is also being rolled out across Asia, with plans to bring it to the U.S. There are 200 million utility poles in the U.S., badly aged.
All over the world infrastructure is aging rapidly and it is impossible for any municipality to keep up with the task of maintaining it. With this game they at least get the chance to prioritize the most urgent cases and fight for a better allocation of resources.
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