Artificial intelligence has arrived on the streets of Lebanon.
The city is incorporating the use of AI into its public works department to improve workforce efficiency and enhance asset management.
Chad Eagly, public works director for the City of Lebanon, said he saw this type of AI firsthand while working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during a mission tour in Afghanistan.
“When I took this position, I looked at the road and street conditions and thought there must be something similar in the civilian market that would do the same thing,” Eagly said. “And by coincidence, perhaps by divine design, Daniel reached out. I was already considering similar software, but this one offers so much more. So I don't even think we're really comparing apples to apples. This product can do so much more.
Last fall, the city purchased an AI program from Germany-based company Vialytics that will help municipalities manage roads and other highway-based assets, said senior sales manager Daniel Laufer. It is said that it will become. The city has been using it since Dec. 1, Laufer said.
“As an early adopter, we bundled all the features into one flat annual fee for unlimited use, which is approximately $17,000 per year,” said Laufer. “Pricing is based on centerline miles. We also waived training and setup fees, and iPhones, giving you a huge discount on your system.”
For the first few months of 2024, public works staff has been learning how to use the technology on 96 miles of highway within city limits.
“There's a new buzzword called AI, which is leveraging AI to solve modern challenges such as asset management related to roads and municipalities, cities, counties, etc.,” Laufer said.
Laufer said Vialytics' tools are easy to use, adding, “If you know how to order a pizza, you can use Vialytics to assess road conditions.”
Vialytics is an AI-based road and asset management tool that is used by attaching an iPhone to the windshield of a city vehicle and going out for a drive. The system captures data approximately every 10 feet and saves images for later download.
“Vialytics’ advanced AI allows users to automatically record the condition of road and asset infrastructure, plan repairs based on the latest data, and centrally manage all maintenance tasks in one simple tool. ” said Laufer.
The company states the benefits of using the system developed in 2018:
- Increased value: This tool leverages AI and digital imagery to significantly improve the quality, value, and longevity of community infrastructure.
- Objectivity in evaluation: The use of AI eliminates human bias and ensures that all infrastructure assessments are based on consistent and objective criteria.
- Consistency and accuracy: The software uses advanced algorithms to provide consistent and accurate analysis of road conditions, enabling more reliable information for infrastructure development, planning and the rest of the road lifecycle.
- quick response: Fast, automated assessments facilitate rapid decision-making and help address infrastructure needs in a timely manner.
Laufer said the system provides important data beyond mapping road conditions.
“We can also catalog and identify damage to other city-owned assets, such as manholes, catch basins, and very important street signs,” he said. “So simply driving around counts as an example not only how many stop signs there are in Lebanon, but also how many of those stop signs are covered in graffiti. Are there any safety hazards or stop signs covered by leaves or tree branches?
Road and signage evaluations are objective, consistent and accurate.
“The first thing our system provides is complete objectivity of the system,” says Laufer. “That is, you get the same rating for the entire city, rolled out over and over again. Therefore, there can be no disagreement. If you say that one street is bad compared to another, We know there is data to back it up.”
Recent changes to federal highway regulations now cover the critical management of approximately 800 stop signs out of a total of 1,600 in the city.
“This is also very important, especially with the recent federal regulations regarding fading and reflectance of signs, we can also assess whether the signs are fading,” Laufer said. “These are some of the capabilities of this artificial intelligence.”
Another feature is to capture data about the condition of the city's roads to reduce future expenses and allow staff to be proactive rather than reactive when problems arise.
“Some of the functions we are currently using this technology for are identifying areas where there is minimal damage to both roadways and property, which will result in higher repair costs in the future. We can estimate the damage,” Ms. Laufer said. “Chad and his team were able to identify many of these issues early on, before they became more serious problems for the city.”
The benefit is that the city's public works staff can enhance their budgeting and accounting processes thanks to the data the system provides throughout the year.
City managers “have to negotiate and juggle different budgets to fix different things,” Eagly said. “This serves as an accountability tool to identify and understand where the damage exists and how much it currently costs to repair that damage, but more importantly, What will happen if I don't do it now? Will it cost money to fix it later? What will happen to our roads and assets? How much safer will our streets be if we fix what, where and when?”
With AI, financial management is done for the long term.
“When we talk about tracking and understanding how the city is spending money, what needs to be fixed, how to fix it, and when to fix it,” Laufer said. said. “We can start tracking this on a more consistent basis. So we can start looking at how the condition of our roads and assets is deteriorating from quarter to quarter. We can now start to track this on a more consistent basis. , Chad and his team will perform condition assessments within a few days, probably three or four times a year.”
Highway Department Superintendent Mike Gettle said the city's data-collecting iPhones are mounted on street sweepers, allowing public works workers to spend months mapping infrastructure instead of using other sites. This will allow them to concentrate on their work.
“Now our cleaners don't have to go out and clean and have two other people drive around the city with notepads and stop and write things down, so now our cleaners are basically It plays a dual role,” Gettle said. “When someone calls to complain about a problem on the road, a problem with a sidewalk, a falling street sign, the city no longer has to send someone out to check it.”
Your manager or another employee should review the data and mark it with a yellow[タスクの作成]Order the job using the button.
“You can search for it in your system and create tasks and assign them to workers directly from violytics. No need to pick up the phone or send additional emails. Everything stays within the same ecosystem. ” says Laufer.
“When you press the action button, you can take a photo and send a voice message along with it to your employees to let them know, 'Hey, there's a tree here. Come to the scene.'” Gettle said.
Laufer showed a captured image of a faded stop sign on his laptop computer, noting how the system includes a timestamp, latitude and longitude, address, title, and required action. This type of review allows city officials to take action if the AI reports an issue. “Then you can assign it to one of your employees or give it a due date,” he said, noting that the symptom detection technology is still in beta.
Gettle said as important as highway functionality is the sign detection system, which attracts attention and is a selling point.
“There are so many signs in Lebanon that it's hard to know which signs are bad, which signs are missing, etc.,” Gettle said. “We experience a lot of symptoms in his year, just between car accidents and thefts.”
Once an issue is detected, work orders can be seamlessly ordered.
“Even the supervisors didn't go and look at it directly from here, but they could see that the signage needed to be fixed,” Gettle said. “You don't have to pick up the phone. You don't have to send an additional email. You can specify a date and assign it directly to one of your employees, or you can share this data. Our team here will solve the problem. There are a number of features that allow this data to be shared externally with other agencies if they are responsible for remediation.”
In municipalities like Palmyra with sinkholes, biomechanics cannot penetrate below the surface to detect potential problems occurring there. At least that technology hasn't been realized yet.
“I think it's a dream. This is something I'm talking about personally, and I see where this technology will go in the future.” Laufer said of his desire to “Utility professionals can already do this and identify underground problems based on indicators from the surface. One thing I quickly learned was that early on, Linear cracks can develop and the asphalt can lead to serious potholes or severe alligator cracking.”
Laufer added that this is where early detection can save money.
“What the city can do right now is figure out where all the areas where linear cracks are occurring so that we can proactively go out and fix the linear cracks before they cause more damage to the city. “That's what we do,” he said.
Laufer hopes his company will have a long-term relationship with the city of Lebanon.
“We have consistent business reviews and are constantly conducting new training and providing updates on new features and technology releases. So part of our relationship with the city is short-term and “It's about understanding their goals for the next few years in terms of long-term capital improvement projects and helping them tailor the use of our technology to best serve the city's needs,” he said. Ta. “This system allows the people who are setting the budget to say, this is what the city needs, this is how much it will cost to fix these things, and if we spend X amount of money to fix this road. We provide data that helps us understand how lifespans can be extended.”
This feature can also predict what it will cost in the future if you do nothing now.
“But the flip side is that if we don't fix these issues, they will cause more serious damage and road safety risks, and will be very expensive to fix in the future.” Laufer said. “So the idea behind it is to give you more money next year and the year after that, but this works the other way around, because instead of dealing with it after the fact like we have in the past. The more we can proactively identify damage, the better we can maintain our roads.”
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