Vaisala and Yotta join forces to help UK councils make faster and smarter use of road condition data

Vaisala RoadAI
Published:
Weather & Environment

New partnership helps local authorities accelerate road maintenance program plans 

Vaisala has partnered with Yotta, the leading global connected asset management and services provider, to enable UK councils to collect accurate high-quality data from across their highways network much faster than before and use it to make more intelligent decisions about the future of their roads.

The two companies are delivering a combined solution to councils. This solution features Vaisala’s RoadAI product and Yotta’s asset management software solutions, Horizons and Alloy. Vaisala’s RoadAI uses high-quality video data and computer vision to assess highway conditions quickly and accurately. Yotta’s Horizons and Alloy then interpret the data and use it to provide rapid insight into future planning and maintenance needs.

UK councils and highway authorities can use Vaisala’s technology to replace their existing road condition survey methodologies which are much slower to collect data and may be inconsistent and subjective. RoadAI enables data collection across highway networks quickly and easily, whilst maintaining quality. 

Ben Brown, Head of Road Asset Management at Vaisala, said: “Our joint solution allows clients to cover much more of their network than a conventional survey. This means they can compress the program time. So, instead of having to plan to undertake a data collection one year, and then wait to receive the results, interpret them, and think about carrying out maintenance the following  year, they can do the data collection and develop the plan in weeks and even carry out the maintenance program, all within the same season.”  

Emily See, Senior Consultant, Infrastructure Asset Management at Yotta, said: “This partnership is all about harnessing innovation to bring benefits to our customers. We are supporting each other to drive through innovation for our council clients across the UK and provide constant feedback between the two organizations in an open and transparent way. Innovation can often be seen as a risk for local authorities, however what we aim to achieve is making innovation safer both for ourselves and our council clients. By working collaboratively local authorities are gaining the benefits of the innovation but also minimizing risk at the same time.”

Clients of the partnership benefit from what Vaisala terms ‘early intervention asset management’. Using Vaisala RoadAI, engineers can collect geospatial video data every time they go out on the network, either responding to an ad hoc call out or as part of a routine network or safety inspection. 

Further to this, clients can automatically process video data to produce condition surveys that allow them to move away from today’s scenario, where they need to book and commission a survey with an external agency when that agency has the resource available and then plan it – six to 12 months in advance. It also gives councils the opportunity to undertake condition surveys on a risk-based approach following the inspection regime. This means our roads may have much more regular condition assessments. 

With the early intervention asset management that the partnership between Yotta and Vaisala supports, councils can pick up defects on the network as soon as they start to occur. This enables them to intervene early and target their treatment plans at minor defects just starting to emerge, in turn enabling them to implement lower cost treatments like sealing up and surface dressing to prevent them deteriorating further over time. 

More information for media:
Tarja Österberg, Communications Manager, Weather and Environment, tel. +358 50 4871974, [email protected]


About Vaisala
Vaisala is a global leader in weather, environmental and industrial measurements. Building on 85 years of experience, Vaisala provides observations for a better world, with space-proof technology even exploring Mars and beyond. It is a reliable partner for customers around the world, offering a comprehensive range of innovative observation and measurement products and services. Headquartered in Finland, Vaisala employs over 1,900 professionals worldwide and is listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange. For more information, please visit www.vaisala.com

About Yotta
Yotta is a leading, global connected asset management software and services provider. Its vision is to transform the management of the built world to create safer, cleaner and more sustainable places for everyone. 

It empowers organizations to make better, more informed decisions by ensuring its customers’ systems, assets and people are connected, and the data they produce is structured and captured to provide operational, as well as strategic insight. 

Innovation is at the heart of everything Yotta does and data drives the company forward. Yotta understands its customers’ needs and provides them with revolutionary connected asset management solutions, utilizing its industry-leading software and consultancy services.

The company’s cloud-based asset management platform, Alloy, equips clients with data visualization, powerful workflow management tools, enterprise-strength and user-specific capabilities. Connected assets lay the foundation for the future of smart cities and communities, and Yotta’s software and services represent a ‘new era’ of connected asset management.  For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.weareyotta.com