A new artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers at the University of Liverpool, called PlanAI, is supported by the Government’s PropTech Innovation Fund and has the potential to radically transform the way urban planners manage and analyze public feedback. This tool offers significant advantages in terms of speed and efficiency, particularly in high-demand areas.
PlanAI is designed to summarize thousands of pages of public comments in just a few minutes, dramatically reducing the time and resources traditionally required.
The tool was developed in collaboration with Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, the joint planning service for Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, and has already shown spectacular results in its first real-world application.
Time Reduction: From 18.5 Hours to 16 Minutes
Compared to the traditional process of analyzing feedback during planning consultations, PlanAI generated detailed summaries for each submission and a comprehensive report covering all feedback received across three consultations in just 16 minutes. In contrast, more than 60 hours were needed to manually process the 320 submissions, with over 18 hours spent on human-generated summaries. PlanAI handled the task with ease and speed, producing accurate reports that also included descriptive statistics and detailed insights into the topics raised by participants.
Professors Alex Lord, Alex Singleton, and Dr. Mark Green from the Department of Geography & Planning at the University of Liverpool led the development of PlanAI. They worked closely with the Planning Policy and Strategy team of Greater Cambridge Shared Planning to ensure that the tool meets the needs of local authorities and communities.
Public consultation is a mandatory component of urban planning. With growing community participation in development and housing issues, local authorities are increasingly faced with the challenge of managing large volumes of comments and reactions. PlanAI addresses this problem by enabling local governments to rapidly incorporate public input, making the consultation process more efficient, inclusive, and accessible.
