A faster, more affordable, and more sustainable way to inspect and maintain road infrastructure

Summary

irisGO™ is a solution that makes it faster, more affordable, and more sustainable to inspect and maintain road infrastructure such as pavements and other assets. The AI-enabled camera system facilitates smarter condition monitoring and proactive decisionmaking by automating data gathering and analysis of road assets and defects in real time – enabling faster and more secure maintenance for safer roads.

Developed by Canadian start-up IRIS, irisGO™ is one of the top five solutions selected by the Global Infrastructure Hub and its eight MDB partners in the Call for Submissions for Sustainable Roads in Emerging Markets.

Need and use case for the technology

Maintenance is critical to the safety and resilience of infrastructure, yet most technology that gathers asset condition data is expensive or impractical at scale. irisGO™ uses dash cameras with AI to detect road hazards and defects in real time, enabling cities to monitor road infrastructure at a substantially lower cost than standard processes which rely on expensive pavement survey trucks, complex lidar data, manual highway patrols, and pen and paper curb side inspections.

The solution can be integrated into routine maintenance and inspection in airport runways, surface water management systems, the forestry industry, as well as road systems, eliminating or reducing the reliance on CO2-fueled vehicles.

Overview of the technology

The irisGO™ smart camera is placed within patrol fleets, waste trucks, or on static assets such as light poles, where it uses AI and machine vision to automatically detect objects of interest (encroachment, potholes, broken signs, barriers, and other defects) and its attributes including class, type, material, size, quantity, and other measurements that feed into reporting and analytics dashboards. irisGO™ leverages existing vehicles that are already in use to collect data that would otherwise be collected through manual inspection.

The benefits of irisGO™ include:

• Increased detection of road deficiencies
• Improved safety by automatically detecting deficiencies and opening work orders so road patrollers can focus on driving safely
• Increased compliance rates through automated detection and reporting, allowing for the patrol of a greater number of roadways in less time
• Faster response times – IRIS’ Application Programming Interface connects the software directly to users’ CRMs to create work orders
• Better availability of data, which are stored in cloud-based storage and are easily accessible to help address claims, measure performance, and support capital planning
• Improved employee engagement through the ability to re-prioritise duties
• Reduced emissions by replacing CO2-emitting inspection vehicles.

“If you can see it – irisGO™ can track it” – IRIS  

Overview of the company

Based in Toronto, Canada, IRIS is an infrastructure technology and smart cities company, and is an internationally recognised pioneer in solving the most difficult data collection challenges facing the roads, tunnels, and transport infrastructure sector today.

IRIS was the 2021 winner of the GI Hub’s innovation competition – InfraChallenge, and currently has road and tunnel maintenance projects in five continents. In 2022, the Federal Government of Canada committed CAD2.5 million to help IRIS advance its technology as part of Canada's Sustainable Development Technology Grant program – elevating clean technologies to contribute to the digitalisation and decarbonisation of the world's transport infrastructure industry.

“We are focused on solving the data gap in concessions and roads management and we have worked extremely hard in ensuring that our solutions drive bottom line impact and contribute to the environmental, social, and governance aspirations of our clients and partners.”  – IRIS

Transformative outcomes of the technology

The irisGO™ solution helps cities, concessionaires, and infrastructure owners increase road safety, reduce on-road emissions, digitise road asset inventories, and extend the life of the world's ageing infrastructure through proactive maintenance, data, and AI.

“The possibilities of [their] smart cities data collection are endless with actionable data feeding into different departments and divisions within the City of Hamilton.” – Cyrus Therani, Chief Digital Officer, City of Hamilton

Example application

In 2021, irisGO™ was adopted by the City of Vaughan, Canada, for AI-enabled road patrol. The city has since expanded its application to include sidewalk assessments, and to capture pavement marking data to help with traffic calming activities around school zones and other high-risk areas. The city leverages IRIS’ Application Programming Interface to connect the software directly to its CRM system to create work orders and has also connected irisGO™ to its winter maintenance decision support system.

“The software allows our staff to be more efficient and effective in keeping Vaughan’s roads safe for residents. It is a great step toward the Vaughan of the future.” – Mayor Steven Del Duca, City of Vaughan

In emerging markets, the solution has been used in Africa and the Caribbean to create a full inventory and database of road signs and conduct pavement condition surveys.