{"id":3627,"date":"2022-12-15T21:04:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T10:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.temp.irap-dev.org\/pioneering-use-of-ai-scoops-prince-michael-royal-road-safety-award\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:28:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T01:28:57","slug":"pioneering-use-of-ai-scoops-prince-michael-royal-road-safety-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irap.org\/fr\/pioneering-use-of-ai-scoops-prince-michael-royal-road-safety-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Pionni\u00e8re dans l'utilisation de l'IA pour la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 routi\u00e8re, elle remporte le Prince Michael Royal Road Safety Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image credit (above and below): Chris Fossey Phtotography<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

An innovative project, harnessing satellite imagery to understand road network safety has been recognised by the Prix Internationaux de S\u00e9curit\u00e9 Routi\u00e8re Prince Michael<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With funding from the World Bank\u2019s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF<\/a>), iRAP and Agilysis <\/a>delivered a ground-breaking research and development project to mine innovative data sources for road safety in Africa, in support of the African Road Safety Observatory (ARSO<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Novel sources of satellite and street imagery data were combined with cutting edge machine learning approaches to map where 75% of road travel occurs across Kenya and Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

The project also developed technology to detect vehicle speeds, flow and other road features that are critical for the measuring and monitoring of road safety indicators.<\/p>\n

There is a clear challenge of collecting relevant safety data in many countries; doing so consistently and comparably between countries is even harder.<\/p>\n

Agilysis leveraged a variety of crowdsourced and open data from various platforms, plus satellite images from MAXAR\u2019s ARD platform to assess more than a dozen different road attributes.<\/p>\n

In recognising the project for this prestigious award, the judges commented that it was, \u201cAn extremely innovative project and ground-breaking for those working in LMICs, it expands on existing initiatives that have proven to be effective in increasing road safety across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking about the award, Agilysis CEO, Richard Owen said, “This project brought together several years of research and development to develop an approach that works at scale. We now have the tools and expertise to conduct rapid analyses of national networks to understand key safety features.\u201d<\/p>\n

iRAP<\/a>, the International Road Assessment Programme, who oversaw the project and evaluated the output data established that several the key metrics were being measured accurately and consistently, recognising the approach with accr\u00e9ditation<\/a> under their AiRAP<\/a> programme.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the project\u2019s outcomes, iRAP Global Technical Director James Bradford said, “We are working to support national governments and regional observatories in collecting vital data to help prioritise investment. New approaches like the ones explored in this project represent a major leap forward in developing data for national indicators and supporting the UN voluntary targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The advanced computer vision techniques mean that the project has gone beyond national level indicators and produced road level data on the following thirteen attributes:<\/p>\n