Why Saudi Arabia needs a smarter Road Infrastructure Mapping Solution

A Nation on the Move

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is more than a blueprint for economic diversification, it is a declaration of intent to redefine how the Kingdom builds, connects, and sustains its cities. At the heart of this transformation lies infrastructure, and within that, roads remain the most critical arteries of national progress.

With investments surpassing $36 billion in 2024 and projected to grow steadily over the next five years, the Kingdom is laying the groundwork for mega-projects like NEOM, the Red Sea development, and the expansion of urban transit systems. These initiatives demand not just more roads, but smarter roads-arteries that are well-maintained, efficiently managed, and digitally mapped for long-term sustainability.Anal

Yet, while new highways and branch roads continue to expand, municipalities face a daunting challenge: how to monitor and manage thousands of kilometers of pavement and millions of roadside assets with speed, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness. This is where infrastructure management in KSA needs a technology-driven breakthrough.

Roads are more than asphalt; they are ecosystems of interdependent assets that include traffic control elements such as signs, markings, and reflective studs, safety infrastructure like curb stones, speed humps, and pedestrian crossings, utility access points including manholes and catch basins, lighting systems that guide nighttime navigation, and pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalks and drop curbs. Each of these requires specific performance standards—signs must remain visible and aligned, markings must retain reflectivity, curb stones must stay intact, and light poles must function reliably. When even one component, like a faded pedestrian crossing near a school, fails, it can compromise safety across the entire network. Managing this complexity demands precision monitoring and proactive intervention, which is why construction solutions in Saudi Arabia are increasingly adopting technology-driven asset monitoring.

Where Traditional Methods Fall Short

Historically, municipalities have relied on manual inspections to monitor road conditions. Teams of inspectors walk or drive along streets, jotting notes, taking photos, and logging defects. While functional on a small scale, this method cannot keep pace with the scale of Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure expansion.

Some of the biggest limitations include:

1. Fragmented Data
   Pavement surveys and asset inventories are often managed by separate departments, producing disconnected datasets. Without integration, decision-makers lack a complete picture of road health.

2. Inconsistent Standards
   Pavement assessments use international benchmarks like the Pavement Condition Index (PCI), but roadside assets lack uniform evaluation protocols. This inconsistency makes prioritization difficult.

3. GPS Errors
   Low-grade GPS tools can misplace assets on incorrect roads. Even advanced RTK GPS can struggle in dense urban environments, creating alignment errors that ripple across datasets.

4. Repetition and Waste
   Poor initial data capture forces municipalities to redo surveys, wasting time, money, and labor.

5. AI Gaps
   While AI-powered systems are gaining ground, many struggle with accuracy, producing outputs that ministries cannot fully trust without labor-intensive quality control.

In a country building new smart cities from scratch, relying on outdated tools is unsustainable. Here lies the need for construction innovation and AI in construction to reshape road management.

The Case for Unified Digital Mapping

The solution lies not in adding more inspectors, but in rethinking the entire road monitoring model. What municipalities need is a mobile mapping system that:

• Captures all assets and pavement conditions in one pass.

• Integrates with GIS and asset management platforms, so decision-makers work from a single source of truth.

• Standardizes condition ratings across diverse asset types.

• Ensures data accuracy through AI + QC pipelines.

• Delivers ready-to-use reports in multiple formats, Excel, GIS, video, for immediate use in planning and budgeting.

A unified digital system transforms road monitoring from reactive patchwork into predictive, data-driven infrastructure management. For the GCC region, where mega-projects are reshaping cities, these types of infrastructure solutions in GCC are becoming essential to keep up with scale and complexity.

SpatialSense 360 MMS: A New Era of Road Intelligence

Kodifly’s SpatialSense 360 Mobile Mapping System (SS360 MMS) is built for modern infrastructure demands. Mounted on a vehicle, it combines multi-sensor hardware with AI-driven analytics to deliver comprehensive, high-accuracy road data in a single survey run.

What It Captures

• Pavement Distresses: Cracks, potholes, rutting, and other defects, benchmarked against ASTM-D6433 standards for PCI calculation.

• Roadside Assets: Light poles, signs, manholes, curb stones, road markings, and more, each tagged with GPS coordinates and condition ratings.

• Spatial Context: High-precision GPS, LiDAR, and camera fusion minimize misplacements and create 3D digital twins of road environments.

Multi-Sensor Integration: GNSS, IMU, LiDAR, and high-resolution cameras ensure redundancy and accuracy.

• AI-Powered Detection: Algorithms identify assets and defects at scale.

• QC Pipelines: Every AI output is refined through a structured quality-control process to meet ministry-grade standards.

• Automated Reporting: The system produces Pure AI output for rapid insights, QC-verified results for compliance, and improvement reports to strengthen AI over time.

This is not just a monitoring tool but a mobile mapping system in KSA designed for the next decade of smart infrastructure.

Potential Impact for Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s context adds unique demands that SS360 MMS is uniquely equipped to meet:

1. Comprehensive Coverage
   From arterial highways to narrow branch roads, the system surveys diverse road environments and detects all key assets in a single sweep.

2. Consistent Standards
   By applying measurable indicators, visibility percentages, reflectivity scores, deterioration ratios, the system ensures consistency across asset classes.

3. Accuracy Where It Matters
   Advanced positioning systems overcome GPS drift, ensuring assets are correctly assigned to their streets, critical for large-scale inventory management.

4. AI + QC Reliability
   The hybrid workflow delivers efficiency while ensuring accuracy, addressing ministry concerns about relying solely on raw AI outputs.

Regulatory Compliance Hosting and data management align with Saudi cybersecurity and cloud regulations, enabling government adoption without compliance risks.

For municipalities, engineering firms, and ministries, adopting SS360 MMS translates into measurable value:

• Unified Asset Management: One system for both pavement and assets eliminates silos.

• Operational Efficiency: Single-pass surveys save time, reduce costs, and minimize disruption.

• Evidence-Based Maintenance: Condition metrics like “sign visibility at 60%” or “40% paint loss on curb stones” guide precise interventions.

• Scalability: Start small, 250 km² of branch roads, and expand to cover the Kingdom’s full network.

• AI That Learns: Each QC cycle strengthens the algorithms, moving toward full automation.

• Enhanced Road Safety: Faster detection and repair reduce risks for drivers and pedestrians alike.

For companies invested in construction Saudi Arabia projects, these benefits extend directly to operational efficiency and long-term savings.

Beyond Maintenance: Building a Digital Future

SS360 MMS is more than a maintenance tool, it’s a building block for Saudi Arabia’s digital twin solutions and smart city ambitions.

• Digital Twins: By creating detailed digital replicas of road networks, municipalities can simulate scenarios, predict wear, and plan upgrades. This makes digital twin solutions in Saudi Arabia a reality rather than a vision.

• Smart City Integration: Data can feed into broader urban management platforms, aligning transport planning with energy, utilities, and public safety.

• Vision 2030 Enablement: Smart infrastructure is a core enabler of the Kingdom’s economic transformation. With tools like SS360 MMS, road networks can become living digital ecosystems, managed with the same intelligence as modern enterprises.

Why Kodifly?

Kodifly goes beyond being a technology supplier, it works as a true partner in transformation. By combining expertise in AI in construction, multi-sensor hardware, and infrastructure analytics, Kodifly provides not just advanced tools but also the training, tailored solutions, and ongoing support that municipalities need to make long-term improvements.

By choosing Kodifly, agencies gain:

• Proven experience in infrastructure monitoring and asset monitoring.

• A scalable solution adaptable from pilot projects to nationwide rollouts.

• Alignment with international best practices while meeting Saudi-specific regulatory needs.

Conclusion

Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure ambitions demand tools as advanced as its vision. Relying on manual surveys and fragmented systems cannot sustain the pace of growth or the quality of safety the Kingdom seeks.

Kodifly’s SpatialSense 360 MMS offers a proven, unified solution, bringing together AI automation, rigorous QC, and multi-sensor accuracy to deliver the smart, efficient, and safe road networks Saudi Arabia needs.

The question is no longer whether to digitize road management, but how fast municipalities can act to seize the opportunity.

Now is the time to build the smart mobility backbone of Vision 2030. With Kodifly’s Road Scanning Solution, the Kingdom can ensure its roads are not just pathways of travel, but highways to the future.