Carmarthenshire County Council

The Vaisala Computer Vision service provides the digital analysis of video imagery in order to identify features and assets. Computer Vision provides an easily accessible, up-to-date view of road network and infrastructure that can be shared amongst various parties to support and speed up decision making.

The key strengths of the Computer Vision service lie in its flexibility, usability and continuous

situational awareness. These benefits are achieved through the application of Artificial Intelligence, which is used to automatically detect asset condition (and any ongoing changes to condition) at a previously unavailable update frequency, in turn enabling the automation of visual inspections.

As explained in our discussions, each Artificial Intelligence module / application has its own learning process requiring input from Vaisala’s R&D team to develop the necessary algorithms and image processing capabilities. Once this development has been completed, the system then needs to be “trained” in the environment of interest. This training requires “live” data, and it is for this reason Vaisala are currently actively looking for partner organisations willing to assist in the development of these modules through Pilot projects. Pilot subscribers will also be able to influence the way these modules are developed, hopefully to the benefit all.

Discovery evidence

This proposal is based on a proposal submitted to Carmarthenshire for a pilot project to develop this technology. This has not yet been progressed due to lack of funds and committment to other projects. There is potential for some very useful technology to be developed. The company are well established and are looking for partners to develop their technology in a meaningful way. It is a potential pilot for us and would be used to develop a business case for a full system and survey programme to develop data and information that would be used to improve service management and drive efficiency. There is certainly potential to widen this for collaborative working with other authorities.

A full technology proposal has been received from Vaisala and this information can be shared to support this EOI.