Today, Ecopia AI ("Ecopia") announces a partnership with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) to deliver a comprehensive HD map of 26 land cover and transportation features to metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) throughout the state of Illinois - covering the third largest metropolitan area in the United States and an area of over 12,000 square miles. This detailed map and its features will ensure that the MPOs have accurate, up-to-date information at scale for decision-making related to transportation, housing, economic development, open space, the environment, and other quality-of-life issues.
CMAP faces challenges that are common for large metropolitan regions. With 286 member municipalities, the standardization and maintenance of regional data can be a complex undertaking. This is not only an issue for large metropolitan regions; IDOT's decision to join the partnership extends access to Ecopia's data for every MPO across the state, supporting stakeholders throughout Illinois to improve transportation projects and programs unique to their region. Ecopia is looking forward to supporting both IDOT and CMAP in their mission to provide easily scalable resources and build local capacity for all communities.
"The partnership with Ecopia empowers us with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy about northeastern Illinois," said CMAP Executive Director Erin Aleman. "These comprehensive and up-to-date views of transportation and land cover will help CMAP and local decision-makers drive innovation and develop projects that serve our region's 8.5 million residents."
By leveraging its advanced artificial intelligence-based mapping systems, Ecopia can ingest high-resolution geospatial imagery data and output transportation-related map features with high precision at a large scale. Specifically, Ecopia is extracting 26 distinct features, including land cover types (roads, sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.) and advanced transportation features (turning lanes, medians, stop lines, etc.) to provide a complete view of the region's land use and pedestrian mobility network. Digitizing these features manually would have taken the MPOs thousands of hours, but Ecopia is able to extract them all from up-to-date imagery with human-like precision in record time.
These 26 features are being used by state and local agencies to support a number of applications including:
- State and regional long-range transportation plans
- Multi-modal analysis
- Active transportation planning
- Vision Zero initiatives
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance
- Stormwater and flood management
- Performance-based capital program monitoring
- Intersection and corridor analysis
- Tree canopy management
"Ecopia is thrilled to deliver IDOT and CMAP with the high-quality map data needed for regional and community planning," added Bill Singleton, VP of Sales at Ecopia. "We are committed to using AI for good, and are proud to be working with the MPOs of Illinois to improve the quality of life for millions of people."
"IDOT is excited to provide resources to metropolitan planning organizations with an innovative data tool for critical statewide infrastructure," said Holly Bieneman, Director of IDOT's Office of Planning & Programming.
Source: https://www.ecopiatech.com/