As City Manager Todd Fuller drives around Vale these days, he’s putting artificial intelligence to work to assess the community’s streets.
The German-designed system gives Fuller a sophisticated look at road conditions. Vale is the first city in Oregon to use it.
With a camera switched on, the software scans the road surface for damage that might elude the human.
Every 12 feet, data is recorded, identifying 15 categories of damage – and ranking the severity.
“It’s very cool,” Fuller said.
He is working on traveling all 12 miles of road in Vale.
“Overall, 50 percent of our roads need attention one way or the other,” he said. “Some need replacement, some need chip sealing.”
The system comes from Vialytics, a company founded in Stuttgart, Germany. The company expanded into the U.S. last year.
The artificial intelligence is meant to improve the efficiency of street work, prioritizing repairs and tracking maintenance needs in detail.
The software generates a task list of needed repairs that can be assigned.
The borough of Crafton, Pennsylvania, started used Vialytics last year. The community, a suburb of Pittsburg, has 17 miles of paved streets, roughly the same as Vale.
“So far, we’re satisfied with it,” said Larry Keenan, borough engineer.
He said the software grades road conditions and then sorts that information by the worst conditions.
“We set up our paving program this year based off of that,” Keenan said.
He said the program is goes “into a lot of detail” and catches “things the eye doesn’t pick up.”
He said the artificial intelligence system replaces consultants the borough used to hire for assessing roads.
“We saved some money there,” Keenan said.
Fuller said he has mapped about half of Vale’s streets.
“It’s a good way to gather everything we have and keep track of it,” Fuller said.