Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the region’s finest public institutions, The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens vegvesen) has won the AI-Driven Business Excellence Award (Public Sector) at the Nordic DAIR (Data & AI Readiness) Awards in Stockholm, at the Data Innovation Summit. Nominated alongside exceptional peers like Sveriges Riksbank and Skatteetaten, Statens vegvesen took the win thanks to its exceptionally responsible and highly ambitious scaling of AI and analytics. It’s a well-deserved victory that highlights the power of modern data strategy in transforming essential public infrastructure.
The Motivation Behind the Project: To Bring Everyone Home and Help Others Do the Same
Road safety is one of the most complex public safety challenges. Severe accidents are rare incidents, but their consequences are devastating. This makes it difficult to prioritize preventive measures effectively. Historically, traffic safety work has relied on fragmented analyses, local experience and reactive measures after accidents have already occurred.
The Risk Curve solution was developed to change this paradigm. The project combines data engineering, statistics, machine learning and deep domain expertise to create a national decision-support system for prioritizing preventive road safety measures. Instead of focusing on where accidents have already happened, the model estimates where serious accidents are most likely to occur in the future.
The strategic objective has been to move traffic safety work from reactive analysis to proactive prevention. By aggregating road geometry, traffic volume, speed limits and accident data, the model identifies high-risk curves across the road network and ranks them according to future accident risk. This allows experts to focus their limited capacity on locations where interventions are most likely to prevent fatalities or serious injuries.
The Challenges of the Project
One of the key challenges was transforming advanced analytics into something practitioners actually trust and use. The project therefore focused not only on model performance, but also on transparency, explainability and integration into existing decision-making processes. The result is a scalable and operational solution delivered through the national data platform, making risk insights accessible to road safety experts and decision makers.
The innovation lies not only in the use of machine learning, but in translating advanced analytics into a practical and trusted decision-support tool for a nationwide public safety mission. The solution establishes a shared, data-driven language for risk, enabling more consistent and transparent prioritization across regions and organizations.
The value created during 2025 has been substantial. Østfold County was among the first adopters and has integrated the model into their planning and budgeting processes. Insights from the model helped identify high-risk curves where new motorcycle hazard warning signs were installed as a preventive measure, demonstrating how data-driven insights can translate directly into real-world safety interventions.
The Capacity of the Model
The model now supports prioritization of inspections and preventive safety measures, with planned interventions at 14 curves in 2026, showing how advanced analytics can move beyond experimentation and directly influence real-world safety decisions.
Beyond individual measures, the solution provides a scalable framework for responsible use of AI in public sector decision making. It combines automation with human judgement, transparency and domain expertise, ensuring that data driven insights strengthen rather than replace expert knowledge.
The value extends beyond the solution itself. We actively share the approach, the lessons learned and the practical use of the model, so that others can adopt similar methods in their own work. Our ambition is not only to improve traffic safety, but also to contribute to a wider adoption of responsible and impactful use of data and AI.
The Risk Curve solution demonstrates how data and AI can create tangible societal value. By helping decision makers allocate resources where they are most likely to save lives, the solution directly supports the ambition behind Vision Zero: that no one should lose their life or be seriously injured on the road and that everyone gets home safely.
About the Award
The award recognizes a public-sector organization that has successfully applied artificial intelligence to improve public services, operational efficiency, or citizen engagement. This award honors projects that use AI and analytics to enhance decision-making, increase transparency, and deliver measurable value to society. The winning organization should demonstrate how AI has been responsibly and strategically embedded into operations, setting a benchmark for data-driven public innovation and service excellence.
You can watch the full ceremony here:
To see more videos from the 11th edition of the Data Innovation Summit, head to the Hyperight’s YouTube channel.
