AI-Powered Mapping Data for Safe and Complete Streets

Designed to accommodate the needs of all users regardless of age, ability, or mode of travel, complete streets play a crucial role in establishing a functional street network that supports the quality of life of all users. However, the absence of comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date transportation basemap data makes planning for and achieving complete streets challenging. 

Civil engineering firms, departments of transportation (DOTs), and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) often collaborate to create and maintain transportation infrastructure to support complete street initiatives. In our recent webinar, Ecopia AI’s Bill Singleton explores how Ecopia’s high-precision geospatial data is empowering civil engineers and urban planners with the information they need to support safe, equitable, and accessible transportation planning. 

For those who missed the webinar, the recording is provided below. Additionally, this blog summarizes key highlights from the webinar to offer a glimpse into some of the insights that were shared during the session.

The need for a national transportation basemap

Bill kicks off the webinar by describing the challenges facing many transportation planning professionals. Whether the goal is to enhance safety, apply for federal funding, or have a better understanding of how people are moving through communities, Bill emphasizes the importance of accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive data. Unfortunately, open-source data is often incomplete or outdated. Adding to the complexity is the intricate nature of transportation networks, making it resource-intensive to accurately capture and maintain a geospatial database of features over time through manual digitization.

Scaling transportation basemap creation with AI

As the session continues, Bill addresses how Ecopia is helping to mitigate these challenges by digitizing the physical world using artificial intelligence (AI). Bill outlines Ecopia’s process of leveraging AI-based systems to convert high-resolution imagery into high-definition vector maps at a national scale, providing civil engineers with the data they need for client projects related to transportation, stormwater, and telecommunications. 

Bill shares how Ecopia regularly works with civil engineering firms to scale MPO and DOT client projects with AI-powered transportation data, including uniquely classified layers for bike lanes, curbs, sidewalks, road markings, medians, individual road lanes, crosswalks, and more. This scalable feature extraction ultimately forms a comprehensive transportation basemap to underpin many high-priority applications in the civil engineering field. For example, Ecopia’s data fuels active multimodal transportation planning, pedestrian right-of-way analysis, vision zero initiatives, and the creation of equitable transportation networks.

Civil engineering transportation project examples using geospatial AI

The next portion of the webinar focuses on a number of case studies that exemplify how Ecopia has worked with civil engineering firms and urban planners to improve project efficiency by providing comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date vector data at scale. Here’s a quick breakdown of each case study, including examples in pedestrian right-of-way, active transportation planning, Vision Zero, and more.

Sidewalk and crosswalk accessibility analysis

In the initial case study, featuring the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), Bill explains that SEMCOG was looking to identify all of the marked and unmarked crosswalk and sidewalk infrastructure across the region to have a better understanding of how much of the population lived within 100 ft of a sidewalk. Recognizing that manually digitizing these assets would be a lengthy and labor-intensive process, SEMCOG partnered with Ecopia. Ecopia's AI-based technology extracted highly detailed vector features from geospatial imagery to provide SEMCOG with the data they needed to conduct a detailed pedestrian right-of-way analysis at scale. Bill explains that in just four months, Ecopia was able to efficiently extract over 24,000 miles of sidewalk data with width attribution, plus 160,000 crosswalk polygons with the accuracy of a GIS professional. This enabled SEMCOG to efficiently identify gaps in their transportation infrastructure, assess sidewalk access across the community, and strategically plan for the future with a focus on achieving equity in sidewalk access.

Active and multimodal transportation planning

Bill then highlights the work Ecopia has done with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA) and Fehr and Peers. With a total area of about 20,000 square miles, San Bernardino is the largest county in the contiguous US. Ecopia worked closely with civil engineers at Fehr and Peers to rapidly scale the digitization of San Bernardino County’s comprehensive transportation network by 45x for multimodal and active transportation planning - not only digitizing all sidewalks and required attributes in three months, but also 16 other advanced transportation features, including turn lanes, curbs, medians, and more. Bill underscores the improved efficiency resulting from Ecopia’s partnership, enabling stakeholders to expedite project timelines and attain their objectives more seamlessly than would have been possible with traditional manual digitization methods.

Transportation safety analysis to support Vision Zero

The next case study details the high-definition right-of-way transportation maps that Ecopia helped the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) create to meet the requirements of its Vision Zero and active transportation plan initiatives. In just two months, Ecopia efficiently extracted transportation feature vector data for over 2,000 miles of road from high-resolution aerial imagery. This provides the county with information about laneway widths and configurations, as well as bike and sidewalk infrastructure and landscaping features. Bill explains how Ecopia’s efficient and accurate feature extraction is enabling civil engineering firms to help MPOs across the US achieve similar results, improving workflows, aiding in the project estimation process, and expediting bid submissions. 

Statewide transportation mapping and data sharing

In the final case study, Bill sheds light on Ecopia's impactful collaboration with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) to develop the region’s first HD map of land cover and transportation networks. Using high-resolution aerial imagery, Ecopia was able to provide 26 distinct layers of transportation-related map features with high-precision at a large scale to support community planning throughout the region, an area spanning over 12,000 square miles. The advanced transportation features include pedestrian right-of-way features like turning lanes, medians, and stop lines, as well as land cover layers like roads, sidewalks, and crosswalks, to support a number of geospatial applications. For example, sidewalk and crosswalk width are captured to better understand the accessibility of pedestrian features. This level of detail is helpful for long-term planning purposes related to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance and Vision Zero requirements, and also informs infrastructure and construction projects in the area. Ecopia's extraction of these features from up-to-date imagery with the precision of a GIS professional significantly reduces the time and effort that would have been spent on manual digitization by thousands of hours, enabling IDOT, CMAP, the other MPOs of the region, and the civil engineering firms working with them to leverage a digital source of truth for the physical world.

Collectively, these case studies exemplify how Ecopia’s solutions improve civil engineering project speed, streamline workflow efficiency, and bolster the ability to scope and bid on client engagements. By having a clear understanding of what's going on in the natural and human-made environments today, firms can get right to work instead of spending precious time manually extracting data. This efficiency not only aids engineering firms in executing successful client engagements, but also increases project scalability and reduces effort to grow project margins.

Interactive transportation data samples

Bill wraps up the session by walking through some of Ecopia’s interactive data samples, offering insights into the variety of features and landscapes Ecopia’s AI-based mapping can produce at scale. He highlights various features such as raised and painted medians across a region, and paint striping to assess available space within networks for additional transportation features. Bill analyzes how tree canopy intersects with sidewalk features to offer insights into pedestrian comfort. He also showcases approaches to utilize the width of features to change transportation models for safer and more equitable streets. 

In addition, Bill presents some of the assets that can be identified using street view, including power poles, traffic lights, and manholes. Understanding what obstructions are at street level helps improve analysis, especially in scenarios involving construction concerns like manholes or storm drains. Bill notes that Ecopia’s GIS-professional quality custom vector feature extraction provides precise data tailored to client project needs.

These data samples can be further explored here.

Get started with AI-powered mapping to scale civil engineering projects

As client engagements become increasingly complex and large-scale, civil engineering firms and urban planners are partnering with Ecopia to get the high-precision geospatial data needed for projects. By providing accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive transportation basemap data, Ecopia's solutions can help improve project speed and efficiency and ultimately support the realization of communities' long-term goals, including those tied to initiatives that support complete streets. 

To learn more about how AI-powered geospatial data extraction can help your next planning project, watch the webinar below and get in touch with Ecopia’s civil engineering team.