Engineering judgement and AI tools working together

Regional towns are beautiful in the space, but balancing local connectivity and resources is a real issue

Benalla Footpath Network Assessment: Ai to enable local insights

Eukai undertook a rapid assessment of Benalla’s walking network to understand footpath condition, missing links and upgrade priorities across the town.

The review combined a structured field inspection with AI-assisted transcription to capture detailed observations from experienced council engineers. During a two-hour site inspection, engineers systematically reviewed streets across the town, recording footpath presence, surface type, surrounding land uses and signs of pedestrian activity.

These observations were converted – using a discrete Ai tool - into a structured register describing each street segment, including footpath condition on both sides of the road, network role, upgrade triggers and priority level. The resulting dataset provides a clear overview of where infrastructure gaps exist and how they relate to the town’s walking network.

With practiced Ai tools and professional experience, this process was completed in days, instead of weeks.

Segments were prioritised using a framework that identifies strategic network gaps, consultation priorities and general missing infrastructure. This allows councils to move quickly from network understanding to investment planning.

The project demonstrated how professional engineering judgement and AI tools can work together to rapidly generate detailed infrastructure datasets. In Benalla, the entire town was reviewed within a single site inspection, producing a structured asset register that can support future walking investment, program development and grant applications.