Finland uses self-driving cars to collect geospatial data

As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, the geospatial data they collect plays a vital role in addressing urban challenges. The Finnish Geospatial Research Institute’s self-driving car continuously maps its surroundings, capturing high-precision data on road conditions, urban vegetation as carbon sinks, and flood risk factors. This rich dataset provides valuable insights for city planning, environmental monitoring and infrastructure management.

Cities need to prepare for flooded streets, harsh weather conditions and deteriorating roads. Accurate data is needed in planning, as collected by the self-driving car of the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI) of the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) in Espoo and Helsinki. Its high-precision sensors gather vast amounts of data from the surrounding environment during every drive, offering great potential for capturing geospatial data to improve urban resilience and infrastructure management.

The Self-driving Cars and Future Data (Big Data) project led by FGI is studying the various purposes for which the data collected by a self-driving car could be used. The project is carried out in cooperation with Aalto University’s Research Institute of Measuring and Modeling for the Built Environment (MeMo) – and with support provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). There are so many application possibilities that not all of them are yet known. The Big Data project studies the theme using case examples.

"We use an autonomous car to collect data on the environment. The collected data has many different uses. Now we are studying the type of data that can be obtained regarding the condition of ruts, roadside trees and carbon sinks in trees," explained Professor Juha Hyyppä from FGI.

Collecting geospatial data to benefit cities

There are not many self-driving cars in Finland. The Autonomous Research Vehicle Observatory (ARVO), the Big Data project’s self-driving research vehicle, has been developed by FGI’s researchers. Its state-of-the-art sensors observe the environment, making it a mobile research laboratory. 

In the future, autonomous or self-driving transport is expected to grow. This also offers the opportunity to have all the self-driving cars of the future collect data from the environment while driving. However, new legislation is required to guide companies to share the data collected by autonomous vehicles for the benefit of companies and society. 

“Cities could use the data collected by self-driving vehicles to meet their various needs. To succeed in this, cities must be able to take into account the format in which data is collected and how the data is processed,” Juha Hyyppä added.

Researchers at FGI help municipalities with the basics of autonomous vehicle data so that they can get the most out of the data. An extra dimension is that the geospatial data collected by self-driving cars also offer opportunities for startups. Companies are assisted by the EU project called Location Innovation Hub, which guides companies in the development of business based on geospatial data.