🔹 Almaty Research Project Acceleration Programme — RoadScan

📍 Almaty · 📅 August 2026 — August 2027 · 🔬 Stage: working prototype

RoadScan is a module of the OpenEgiz digital twin platform designed for automated monitoring of road surface condition across a city’s street network. It is being developed by the Digital Twin Laboratory of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

The problem

Almaty’s street network covers 3,145 km and 2,752 streets, of which 277 are arterial roads totalling 1,165 km. Current regulations provide for seasonal road surveys, but there is no separate standard for continuous, full-coverage monitoring of an urban network. Between surveys, surface condition is tracked only sporadically — through residents’ reports and site inspections. RoadScan addresses precisely this gap: continuous observation of the network between scheduled surveys.

🔬 How it works

  • Capture via regular city transport. A camera with GPS is mounted on public transport vehicles that already travel these routes daily. No specialized survey vehicle or LiDAR is required, making the capture kit an order of magnitude cheaper.
  • Defect detection. Cracks, potholes and other surface damage are identified using computer vision applied to video frames.
  • Map referencing. Every detected defect is geotagged and placed on a city map as a surface condition layer.
  • Integration with OpenEgiz. The data feeds into the city’s digital twin: segment-level dynamics, change history and repair prioritization.

🔬 What the city gains

  • An objective picture of network condition, updated regularly rather than twice a year
  • Repair prioritization based on actual condition rather than on complaints
  • The ability to track how a segment behaves after repair
  • Data in an open format within the city’s digital infrastructure

📌 Rights and terms

Exclusive rights to the development belong to Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The city receives a perpetual, royalty-free licence to the module and to the data collected on city routes, with no annual subscription.

🏆 Project status

  • ✅ Completed the Almaty Research Project Acceleration Programme (certificate No. 177, July–August 2026)
  • 🔬 A baseline defect detection algorithm has been developed and tested
  • 📅 Timeline: August 2026 — August 2027
  • 👥 Team: 8 researchers. Project head: Gulshat Amirkhanova, PhD