Blyncsy produces US interstate highway asset map

Blyncsy says it has mapped all US interstate highways showing assets such as guardrails, speed limit signs and work zones to support safety and maintenance work.

The Bentley Systems company has made the data available to all US state departments of transportation. 

The map is created using crowd-sourced dash camera imagery from more than one million vehicles in use today. When coupled with Blyncsy’s artificial intelligence image analysis toolset, 40 different road conditions and asset inventory issues in near-real time are detected. These issues include potential roadway safety hazards, from guardrail damage, missing signage and lack of proper road striping to roadway vulnerabilities from crashes, natural disasters and work zone areas.

“With increasing workloads and smaller budgets, state DoTs need a way to improve roadway safety and operational efficiencies,” said Mark Pittman, chief executive of Blyncsy and Bentley’s director of transportation AI. 

“Today, we’re supporting a national digital infrastructure vision and democratising roadway data by publishing an open dataset of US highways to help state DoTs better prepare, maintain and repair more miles and create safer environments for maintenance crews and drivers.”

Blyncsy’s AI-powered crowd-sourced data is delivered through an open API (application programming interface). The company says that it provides state DoTs with a solution that is infinitely scalable and is more cost-efficient compared to other manual data collection technologies, including Lidar and traditional road inspection methods which require onsite road maintenance crews.

"The application of advanced technologies like AI, combined with new sources of data, are transforming the transportation sector, giving us better information as we make investments in safety and mobility,” said Laura Chace, president and chief executive of ITS America.

"We applaud companies like Blyncsy for deploying these forward-thinking technologies and making this digital infrastructure data available to the public in an accessible format.”

The map is available through Blyncsy’s website.

Among the company’s clients are Hawaii DoT, North Central Texas Council of Governments and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.