Overcoming Oslo’s Infrastructure Problems: Triona and EyeVi Provide Solutions

Common goals and a shared vision

The CEOs of EyeVi and Triona met in Stockholm at the Swedish national roads administration, and this meeting marked the beginning of the end of Oslo’s infrastructures problems.  

Triona is a well-established supplier of innovative IT solutions within logistics- and infrastructure-oriented businesses, and they operate in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. EyeVi offers on-demand mapping technology and AI-powered software that captures and processes high-accuracy geospatial data. The business goals of the two companies matched perfectly, and the decision to collaborate was an easy one to make.  

One year before the full-scale cooperation began, Mats Bayard of Triona and Gaspar Anton of EyeVi agreed to run a pilot project in Stockholm. This pilot proved successful and validated scaling their collaborative efforts to the entire Oslo municipality. When Triona won the public tender of the Oslo municipality, the two companies officially undertook their cooperative goal to improve infrastructure in Norway’s capital.

Together we can deliver some really interesting solutions that really create value for the customer. We complement each other’s expertise,  and have products and solutions that together are very strong and this is a good component for further success.

- Mats Bayard, Triona’s CEO

‍

Tackling Oslo’s backlog of road maintenance work

The municipality of Oslo had long struggled with planning, prioritizing, and budgeting for road maintenance. As with other large cities and road management in general, the backlog of necessary work was only growing. It was challenging to prioritize specific projects over others without risking misplaced investment in time and money.

A tender was announced to get Oslo’s road maintenance back on track, and Triona was rewarded as the winner. Their assignment was first to create a digital overview of the road network’s status for the entirety of the municipality. Then they had to develop an actionable strategy for road maintenance over the next ten years.  

Triona is a leading and reliable supplier of innovative IT solutions, but they needed the best base data possible in order to accomplish the large undertaking. EyeVi Technologies stepped in to help provide the proper hardware and AI software so their cooperation could move to the next level.

‍

AI-powered data capture and processing – fast and cost-efficient

The base data needed to lay the foundation for the entire project’s success had to be more accurate than what Triona could offer. Other geospatial and infrastructure technology companies provide a variety of hardware that each have their own pros and cons.  

And EyeVi’s hardware offers a level of precision that is purposefully designed to detect the most prevalent and problematic road defects and map road assets, such as signs, streetlights, road markings, and other road furniture. EyeVi uses a panoramic camera, a LiDAR scanner accurate up to 3 cm, and a GNSS/INS system to achieve these results. This base data would later serve to guide long-term roadwork priorities.  

Altogether, 1,365 km of data was captured and processed. EyeVi’s AI-powered software was used to extract road defects automatically from the data, such as potholes and cracking. Also, information about road assets, such as crosswalks, road markings, road signs, speed bumps, barriers, noise shields, traffic islands, and fences, were collected during the process.

‍

Deliverables and real-world benefits

The processed data was then used as the basis for providing a 10-year maintenance plan for the Oslo municipality (with the help of Veiteknisk Institutt). Within a month, EyeVi delivered a massive amount of information to serve as the basis for Triona’s further work.  

But the information is only as good as its interpretation and presentation. That’s why the data was visualized in the form of orthographic photos and panoramic images. In total, 1.3 million road defects were detected, falling into eight classes.

The collaboration benefitted enormously for Triona as well as EyeVi because the two companies complement each other’s expertise to offer the end customer the ideal solution.  

Data captured and processed by EyeVi’s solution would have otherwise been done manually, which saved Triona a considerable amount of time and money. Collecting various data, such as road pavement conditions and different asset items, helped EyeVi develop the AI capabilities even further.  

Triona and EyeVi were not the only beneficiaries of this collaboration. The end users, the Oslo municipality and its hundreds of thousands of commuters, also saw a marked improvement in their road networks.  

With a Master Road Plan 2022–2031 based on updated, correct data of the road network stored in National Road Data Bank (NVDB), we are very well equipped to be able to make the right decisions in the future. With this project the City of Oslo wanted to get an updated status of the conditions and serviceability of the roads and thus make the road network and its future need for resources predictable to both the road manager and the granting authority. We seem to have succeeded! And with automatic detection of road damage based on 360˚ road images, laser clouds, and artificial intelligence, we have a  knowledge of road condition that is completely unique.

- Joakim Hjertum, Oslo Section Manager at Urban Environment Agency

The potential use for the processed data

AI-powered data capture solutions applied to road network conditions are increasingly fast and cost-effective. But the benefits do not end there. Not only is the quality level of the AI-processed data more consistent and unified than with manual annotations, but the data quality that EyeVi ensures also corresponds to the requirements of various databases. The ease with which the data could be synced with these databases was especially beneficial with EyeVi’s cooperation in the Oslo project, as our data quality fits the Norwegian and Swedish National Road Database (NVDB) requirements.

“The partnership with Triona proved to be the one of the best collaboration efforts with EyeVi. They are top professionals in their field and have complementary products such as TNE, which made our job so much easier. We are very fortunate to have such high caliber partners for all of our ambitious projects."

- Sven Veskioja – COO of EyeVi Technologies

It is possible to combine this data about road pavement conditions and information on road assets with other road infrastructure data, paving the way for creating digital twins. However, while the technical solutions are already there to provide such complemented data, the market is not quite there yet. Nevertheless, Triona and EyeVi are hopeful and looking toward the future.

‍

‍

‍