Captain Nemo

i think i know what this is.

several companies are producing GIS systems for local authorities, they film the carriageway from several different angles, and then sync it all back to a chainage and a os plan, this allows highway authorities to do inventory and maintenance fault reporting stuff using the shots, they just send a guy out on site with a transponder and he takes photos, logs the problem and it gets put onto the plans straight away, its pretty cool, The highways agency have the majority of trunk roads already filmed, and get them re run every 2 years, then if a sign gets hit or something like that, you can check on the software exactly what was there before it got hit. A lot of local authorities are buying into this too, and some of the suppliers are filming the runs in advance and then trying to sell them on.