AI helps Quebec municipalities track cars, trees, pools. But experts remain wary of risks

Municipalities in Quebec's capital region have recently begun using artificial intelligence to track everything from tree cover to cars — and even backyard pools.

The Communauté métropolitaine de Québec, which groups Quebec City and its suburbs, says the groundbreaking project will help member municipalities achieve their environmental targets, assess parking availability and monitor urban development.

But as more Canadian cities adopt AI tools, experts warn they need to think carefully about how they're using the technology, and whether the public is fully on board.

Frédérick Lafrance, geomatics development manager at CMQuébec, said the organization has trained a deep learning model on high-definition aerial photos of Quebec City and the surrounding region taken in 2021.

The AI model can pick out and highlight several different features, including buildings, trees, vehicles, swimming pools, backyard trampolines and jungle gyms.

"The performance is equivalent or very similar to a human," he said in a recent interview. "Except that the speed of execution is much greater, so we can do a lot of work in very little time."

The data can be used in different ways. Lafrance said Quebec City and many surrounding municipalities have targets for urban greening and tree cover, and artificial intelligence is a natural tool to measure progress. Conversely, it can also measure how much green space has been converted to asphalt over time.

Municipalities could also use the images to see whether there's enough parking in different areas, he said. And tracking backyard pools could help cities decide where to send inspectors.

"That information is difficult to obtain because it requires a lot of manual labour," he said. "So we're offering a service that shows them where the pools are, and they can use that to follow up."

A new set of aerial photos is being taken this summer, Lafrance said, and he hopes to analyze them this winter. He's also hoping to apply the technology to photos taken as far back as the mid-20th century to assess how the region has developed over time.

The 2021 images are currently available through the provincial government's open data portal.

Lafrance said he believes CMQuébec is the first municipal body in Quebec to use AI in this way, though he thinks it's only a matter of time before other big cities adopt similar tools.

Renee Sieber, an associate professor of geography at McGill University who studies artificial intelligence, said municipalities across the country are already using AI in a range of ways.

Edmonton, for example, has used artificial intelligence as part of a project that uses remote cameras to monitor wildlife entering the city.