Pedestrian-Accessible Infrastructure Inventory: Enabling and Assessing Zero-Shot Segmentation on Multi-Mode Geospatial Data for All Pedestrian Types

In this paper, a Segment Anything Model (SAM)-based pedestrian infrastructure segmentation workflow is designed and optimized, which is capable of efficiently processing multi-sourced geospatial data, including LiDAR data and satellite imagery data. We used an expanded definition of pedestrian infrastructure inventory, which goes beyond the traditional transportation elements to include street furniture objects that are important for accessibility but are often omitted from the traditional definition. Our contributions lie in producing the necessary knowledge to answer the following three questions. First, how can mobile LiDAR technology be leveraged to produce comprehensive pedestrian-accessible infrastructure inventory? Second, which data representation can facilitate zero-shot segmentation of infrastructure objects with SAM? Third, how well does the SAM-based method perform on segmenting pedestrian infrastructure objects? Our proposed method is designed to efficiently create pedestrian-accessible infrastructure inventory through the zero-shot segmentation of multi-sourced geospatial datasets. Through addressing three research questions, we show how the multi-mode data should be prepared, what data representation works best for what asset features, and how SAM performs on these data presentations. Our findings indicate that street-view images generated from mobile LiDAR point-cloud data, when paired with satellite imagery data, can work efficiently with SAM to create a scalable pedestrian infrastructure inventory approach with immediate benefits to GIS professionals, city managers, transportation owners, and walkers, especially those with travel-limiting disabilities, such as individuals who are blind, have low vision, or experience mobility disabilities.