Gabon Road Surface and Passability Data for 5,300 km of Arterial Roads

HeiGIT produced this dataset mapping 5,300 km of arterial roads in Gabon using AI analysis of PlanetScope satellite imagery from 2020 and 2024. It provides high-resolution predictions for road surface, width, and logistical passability for motorway, trunk, primary, and secondary road classes.

Use Cases

• Identifying logistical bottlenecks for heavy transport using 'Road Width Class' and 'Humanitarian Passability Index (HPI)'
• Tracking national infrastructure improvements by filtering for 'Road Surface Change' transitions from unpaved to paved
• Enhancing OpenStreetMap data by filling missing 'surface tag' values with 'DL Surface Prediction' results

Strengths

• 89.2% surface prediction accuracy compared to 64.7% for OSM tags
• Covers 5,300 km of the national arterial road network
• Provides temporal change detection between 2020 and 2024

Limitations

• Geographic bias towards major transit corridors
• AI predictions may be affected by Gabon's dense tropical vegetation or cloud cover
• Small percentage (8.162%) of roads still lack OSM surface tags for comparison

Provenance

Source

HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology)

Collection Method

AI-derived predictions from PlanetScope satellite imagery integrated with OpenStreetMap vector data

Time Range

2020 - 2024

Freshness

Last updated March 2026; compares imagery from 2020 and 2024.

Geography

Gabon