Edmonton experiments with AI to predict and identify potholes
Posted March 5, 2025 6:25 pm.
Last Updated March 5, 2025 8:44 pm.
As the warmer weather approaches, you may notice an increase in potholes.
CityNews spoke with some locals to see their reactions.
“Way too many, an exorbitant amount of potholes it drives me bonkers,” said one local.
“Every spring, it’s no different than any other year,” said another.
The city admits, it’s a bad year for the number of potholes.
But to fix them, Edmonton is now using artificial intelligence to predict and identify new holes.
The technology takes previous complaints from 311 and prioritizes the worst spots in the city, saving the city’s inspector’s time.
“So, we’re not going to eliminate duplicate complaints because you can’t stop the public from calling multiple times, but what we do is we flag it on our end so it doesn’t require that manual effort of going through all that data and trying to figure out what’s unique and what’s duplicate,” said Kris Andreychuk, data scientist and research manager at the city of Edmonton.
According to city’s data, nearly 32 thousand potholes have been filled so far this year, more than triple the number repaired in the same time last year.
While the weather played a role, one city councillor believes Edmonton is getting better at addressing the problem.
“Ai is going to quickly become one of those tools that you’ll need it in almost every single area because the more you implement that type of technology, the more it can be used to help and try to provide better services,” said Andrew Knack, councillor ward at Nakota Isga.
CityNews spoke with locals to see their reactions to the new AI tool.
“I do trust it more than my own eye,” said one local.
“They don’t have to go through a bureaucracy to fix the thing just put something in it, said another. “That’s all they got to do, the older way we used to do it, they don’t have AI or anything else,” said another.
The city says, the tool is still experimental and it still need Edmontonians help by reporting to 311 as the AI tool is referencing the data from pothole complaints.
