- By Laura Kvigstad, Auckland Council reporter funded by New Zealand on Air
Auckland Transport (AT) has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify landslide vulnerabilities on 8000 kilometres of the region’s roads.
At a recent Auckland Council transport, resilience and infrastructure committee meeting, AT presented work done to map landside vulnerabilities in the road network.
AT’s chief scientist Cathy Bebelman said severe weather events of early 2023 gave AT the chance to build a framework to evaluate the susceptibility of the road network to landslides.
“It posed a unique opportunity for Auckland Transport to capture the data associated with approximately 2000 landslides and to begin our resilience planning for inland hazards.”
Bebelman said artificial intelligence used things such as vegetation, slope and soil saturation to assess the vulnerability of slips for 8000km of roads.
“Now we have a GIS layer of our road network with areas predicted to have high susceptibility to landslides.”
She said the maps could be used to predict future slips and make decisions over what parts of the road network are worth repairing.
“If we have more storm events and they’re predicted with the increasing intensity of our climate change hazards, there will be areas on our network that the council will be asked to make funding decisions on.”
Councillor Julie Fairey asked what obligations the council had to find another route for access to private properties if a road was one day closed.
“Do we understand what our legal obligations are about providing access to people’s properties because obviously that’s going to have some interplay here,” Fairey asked.
She wondered if the council could lead future discussions with landowners, particularly remote ones with large sections, about access and potentially moving in some cases.
Bebelman responded that the Local Government Act required controlling authorities to provide access but also gave the power to stop a road under certain conditions.
“Our communities accessing their private properties, businesses, schools and hospitals is an important part of managing our road network.
“I hope we have those conversations before they are needed. That’s the uncertain part of the climate change hazards,” said Bebelman.
Councillor Greg Sayers asked if the hi-tech tools could also be used to look at the risks to homes.
“Do you think it could be extended at some time around looking at potential risk to property and homes being at risk,” Sayers asked.
Bebelman said AT was focused on maintaining the road network, but the work could be extended.
