CUMTA turns to AI for digital road registers

CHENNAI: The Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) has proposed two geospatial platforms to help estimate land acquisition requirements for road and other linear infrastructure projects. The platforms will also automate the creation of digital road registers by extracting road data from approved layout plans.

The authority has now floated a limited tender to develop the Proof of Concept (PoC) solutions.

The proposal seeks to address two long-standing challenges in transport planning: estimating land acquisition requirements during the planning stage, and creating GIS-based road registers from approved layout plans. According to CUMTA, land costs are currently assessed only approximately during the early stages of planning, without a realistic understanding of the actual land requirement. This often leads to a sharp increase in project costs once land acquisition is initiated. To overcome this, CUMTA proposes developing an AI-powered Web GIS platform to estimate land requirements and acquisition costs using Survey and Settlement and Inspector General of Registration data.

The first platform will function as a decision-support system for road development projects. It is expected to integrate multiple spatial and land-related datasets and display proposed road corridors on a GIS platform. It will also assess corridor feasibility, estimate land acquisition requirements and associated impacts, automatically generate Land Plan Schedules (LPS), and produce dashboard-based reports. Officials will be able to export maps, reports and analytical outputs for planning and decision-making.

The CUMTA says the PoC is meant to demonstrate how geospatial technologies can improve planning efficiency, reduce manual effort and support evidence-based decision-making during road infrastructure planning, before any wider implementation is considered.

The second platform focuses on creating digital road registers, an area where the Authority notes many local bodies still lack GIS-based road records or near-real-time updates. The proposed system will automatically extract road network information from CMDA and DTCP-approved layout plans and convert them into GIS-ready datasets.

This will then create a centralised digital road repository, assess road connectivity and continuity, and generate dashboard-based reports for planning and management.

Speaking to DT Next, Palanivel, Chief Engineer (Construction and Maintenance) of the Tamil Nadu Highways Department, said such a platform could prove useful if it can accurately integrate digital land records with proposed road alignments.

"If the Field Measurement Book (FMB) sketches are available in digital form and the mapping is accurate, it can be a very useful tool," he said. By superimposing the proposed right of way (right to pass someone's land) over digitised land records, officials could estimate the extent of land required from individual survey numbers before acquisition. He stressed that the concept would first have to be validated through a pilot.

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According to CUMTA, many areas still lack GIS-based road records or near-real-time updates

The first AI-powered system will tackle integrating datasets and display proposed road corridors on a GIS platform to decide on logistics

The second system will extract road information from CMDA and DTCP-approved plans to create GIS-ready datasets and eventually, digital road repository