Leuven, The Capital City Of Innovation Scans Its Road To Enhance Road Safety

The City of Leuven, capital of Flanders in Belgium and one of the European Capitals of Innovation can estimate faster and more efficiently where and when streets need repair by using a 3d digital model of the full road network, created by XenomatiX.

XenomatiX, developer of true-solid-state lidar technology is the chosen partner for the job. With their road lidar system, XenomatiX measures the road condition with 28,000 laser beams and has digitally mapped the complete suburb network in just a few days, representing 150 km of data and images.

The data collection is done by driving a vehicle equipped with the road lidar and HD-camera. The system completely digitizes the road surface and collects data of the condition of the pavement, its evenness, rutting, potholes, cracks and even road markings.

The results are highly satisfying, says Alderman Dirk Vansina from City of Leuven ‘’We receive data for every cm² of Leuven's streets. The data is visualized on our own GIS system and colour coded; this instantly enables our team to assess the exact condition of the road surface. Additionally, to the 3D map, XenomatiX provides 2D geo-tagged images of the road surface, so that no road distress remains unnoticed’’.

Traditionally the process of assessing the pavement condition has been labour intensive and costly as it required a team of surveyors and road engineers to investigate manually each road.  With the digital measurements, the surveyor gets remote access to very accurate data within their own GIS platform. The data visualised provides immediate insights on the condition of the road surface.

The city of Leuven is happy with the results and more measurements are planned to complete the full digitization of 400 km of road network of the city.

Simultaneously the city has measured its sewage system to plan roadworks in phase with required sewage renewal works and vice-versa, and to determine whether damage to the road surface is caused by a defect in the sewer.

Alderman Vansina added: “It is our intention to digitally register all streets in Leuven and sub-municipalities in the coming period. Combined with other data such as the location of sewer covers and drains each street receives an extensive digital passport. In this way we can better control flaws on the road before they can aggravate’’.

The city continues to prove its innovating spirit as one of the European Capital of Innovation.