Record road damage with cameras on refuse vehicles

Local authorities record road damage with cameras on refuse collection vehicles

Needs setupAI Act: no extra obligationsInspecting by cameraPublic administration

Fits: Production, engineering & maintenance

Refuse collection vehicles already drive along almost every street regularly. Cameras therefore deliver an ongoing picture of potholes, cracks and sunken manhole covers, and road maintenance sees damage earlier and can group repairs by street.

Is this for you?

  • Your road inspectors cannot cover all streets as often as you would like, or damage mainly becomes known through complaints and accident reports.
  • Waste management and road construction work together, and the vehicles may be retrofitted, even if a contracted waste disposal company operates them.
  • You have a road register or a map application that reports can feed into.
First step today

On a street with known damage, take 10 photos through the windscreen from the passenger seat of a service vehicle, without people and legible number plates. Have them classified with the template below and compare the result with your road inspectors’ findings. This shows you which damage can be seen from vehicle height at all.

How to go about it

  1. Define types of damage and urgency classes
  2. Retrofit cameras to the vehicles
  3. Label damage images from your streets
  4. Test detection against road inspection and set thresholds
  5. Integrate reports into the road register and work order process
  6. Regularly check false reports and missed damage

Templates to copy

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Included in the training

The complete guide

  • 6 steps explaining exactly what to do
  • 3 proven templates to copy into your own AI
  • Safe use: data, checking, deciding, informing
  • Pitfalls, effort and how to recognise success

With the training you get all 430 guides for as long as your access runs.

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Same approach, other use cases

24 more use cases follow the pattern “Inspecting by camera”.

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VW-03 · Legal status 08.10.2026