NKDA to use AI for road monitoring

Kolkata: New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) has started using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for road monitoring in New Town.

This is the first time that such a cutting-edge technology is being used for this purpose in the state. The technology is presently being used in Action Area I and will soon be extended to Action Area II and III.

A GPS enabled camera is mounted on a vehicle which has a 130 degree field of view and apart from identifying potholes or similar maintenance issues, it can also spot roadside issues such as stacks of construction materials, unauthorised roadside stalls, etc. Prompt corrective action is being taken up immediately.

Elaborating on the working of the camera, a senior NKDA official said that it records road condition images, identifies the latitude-longitude markers and saves it on a server.

Performing video analytics, it judges the severity of the potholes and classifies them into an Excel sheet, giving their locations and severity in a table format. The locations are also marked automatically on a Google map and can be viewed at once.

"We are trying out the operations of this advanced monitoring device in our engineering wing," the official added. He maintained that the AI committee constituted by the state IT department has selected this technology, which has been developed by a startup.