Enhancing Road Infrastructure Monitoring: Integrating Drones for Weather-Aware Pothole Detection

The abstract outlines the research proposal focused on the utilization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for monitoring potholes in road infrastructure affected by various weather conditions. The study aims to investigate how different materials used to fill potholes, such as water, grass, sand, and snow-ice, are impacted by seasonal weather changes, ultimately affecting the performance of pavement structures. By integrating weather-aware monitoring techniques, the research seeks to enhance the rigidity and resilience of road surfaces, thereby contributing to more effective pavement management systems. The proposed methodology involves UAV image-based monitoring combined with advanced super-resolution algorithms to improve image refinement, particularly at high flight altitudes. Through case studies and experimental analysis, the study aims to assess the geometric precision of 3D models generated from aerial images, with a specific focus on road pavement distress monitoring. Overall, the research aims to address the challenges of traditional road failure detection methods by exploring cost-effective 3D detection techniques using UAV technology, thereby ensuring safer roadways for all users

Deflection based condition assessment for Rolling Wheel Deflectometer at network level

The Rolling Wheel Deflectometer (RWD) is capable of measuring pavement deflection at high speeds without traffic interruption or compromising safety along tested road segments. To optimize the use of RWD at the network level, an assessment tool is needed to incorporate RWD data into current Pavement Management System (PMS) and to identify pavements in need of maintenance or rehabilitation. The objective of this study is to present the development of a screening tool, referred to as the pavement assessment triangular model, to predict pavement overall conditions based on RWD deflection, roughness measurements, and surface conditions as described by the Pavement Condition Index (PCI). Formulation of the proposed tool and its application were based on data collected during evaluation and testing of RWD in Louisiana. The relationship among SN, deflections and pavement distresses were also investigated to better understand the screening tool. Based on the analysis presented in this study, the proposed pavement assessment triangular model may be used at the network level to identify deficient pavement sections

Low-Cost Rural Surface Alternatives: Literature Review and Recommendations

Freezing and thawing action induces damage to unbound gravel roads in Iowa resulting in maintenance costs for secondary road departments. Some approaches currently used by County Engineers to deal with this problem include temporarily spreading rock on the affected areas, lowering or improving drainage ditches, tiling, bridging the area with stone and geosynthetic covered by a top course of aggregate or gravel, coring boreholes and filling them with calcium chloride to melt lenses and provide drainage, and re-grading the crown to a slope of 4% to 6% to maximize spring drainage. However, most of these maintenance solutions are aimed at dealing with conditions after they occur. This study was tasked with identifying alternative approaches in the literature to mitigate the problem. An annotated bibliographic record of literature on the topic of frost-heave and thaw-weakening of gravel roads was generated and organized by topic, and all documents were assessed in terms of a suitable rating for mitigating the problem in Iowa. Over 300 technical articles were collected and selected down to about 150 relevant articles for a full assessment. The documents collected have been organized in an electronic database, which can be used as a tool by practitioners to search for information regarding the various repair and mitigation solutions, measurement technologies, and experiences that have been documented by selected domestic and international researchers and practitioners. Out of the 150+ articles, 71 articles were ranked as highly applicable to conditions in Iowa. The primary mitigation methods identified in this study included chemical and mechanical stabilization; scarification, blending, and recompaction; removal and replacement; separation, and reinforcement; geogrids and cellular confinement; drainage control and capillary barriers, and use of alternative materials. It is recommended that demonstration research projects be established to examine a range of construction methods and materials for treating granular surfaced roadways to mitigate frost-heave and thaw-weakening problems. Preliminary frost-susceptibility test results from ASTM D5916 are included for a range of Iowa materials

Pavement structural evaluation using the Rolling Wheel Deflectometer

The Rolling Wheel Deflectometer (RWD) offers the benefit to measure pavement deflection without causing any traffic interruption or compromising safety along the tested road segments. This study describes a detailed field evaluation of the RWD system in Louisiana in which 16 different test sites representing a wide array of pavement conditions were tested. Measurements were used to assess the repeatability of RWD measurements, to examine the effect of truck speeds, and to study the relationship between RWD and FWD deflection measurements and pavement conditions. Based on the results of the experimental program, it was determined that the repeatability of RWD measurements was acceptable with an average coefficient of variation at all test speeds of 15%. In addition, the influence of the testing speed on the measured deflections was minimal. The scattering and uniformity of the FWD and RWD data appear to follow closely the conditions of the roadway. Both test methods appear to properly reflect pavement conditions and structural integrity of the road network by providing for a greater average deflection and scattering for sites in poor conditions. RWD deflection measurements were in general agreement with FWD deflections measurements; however, the mean center deflections from RWD and FWD were statistically different for 15 of the 16 sites. This study also developed and validated a direct and simple model for determining the pavement Structural Number (SN) using RWD deflection data. To develop this model, the relationship between the average RWD surface deflection and the peak FWD deflection was investigated. The developed model correlates pavement SN to two RWD-measured properties (average RWD deflection and RWD Index). The developed model was fitted to RWD data collected in 16 road-sections (each 1.5 miles), referred to as research sites, in Louisiana. The model was then validated based on FWD and RWD data collected on 52 road sections in Louisiana. Results showed a good agreement between SN calculations obtained from FWD and RWD deflection testing. While the developed model is independent of the pavement thickness and layer properties, it provides promising results as an indicator of structural integrity of the pavement structure at the network level. The fitting statistics support the use of the proposed model as a screening tool for identifying structurally-deficient pavements at the network level

Asset condition monitoring of Gympie regional council’s road network

Gympie Regional Council (GRC) spends between $10M-$15M on roadworks as part of its annual capital works program. Currently, the selection of projects for these programs relies heavily on customer complaints, councillor requests and feedback from GRCs Construction and Maintenance Branch. GRCs Design Service Division has identified a need for this process to include quantifiable asset condition data, giving the project selection process a consistent and impartial foundation. This project seeks to define a process which will result in the collection of road condition data which can then be used to identify road segments in need of capital works. Road condition assessments seek to provide an indication of the overall condition of the road by identifying and recording defects in the road pavement and surfacing. As road condition is linked to the age of the asset, road segments found with high defect rates, thus approaching the end of their useful life can be programmed in for capital works. The goal is to provide a reliable long term capital works program to ensure optimal distribution of the available funding. An analysis of the available literature covering road condition assessments was undertaken. This included nationally recognised best-practice manuals by Austroads, to research papers addressing state of the art data collection techniques. GRCs practices regarding road condition assessment were reviewed. This lead to conducting a gap analysis between GRCs existing road inspection procedure and what is currently accepted as best-practice. The above-mentioned research, review and gap analysis provided the platform for the development of draft corporate documents for GRC concerning road condition assessment, including an operational framework. The framework comprises of an initial assessment phase where the entire sealed road network is screened using road roughness measurement. The roughness data is then used to shortlist a portion of the road network for detailed assessment. There is scope for the detailed assessment phase to be undertaken by GRCs existing inspectors. The framework was developed with a focus on the following findings: • Quality data must be collected and used; otherwise there will be little confidence in the outputs of the system. • From a strategic planning standpoint, the condition of a road does not change rapidly. Therefore, frequent inspection cycles are unnecessary and uneconomical. • The amount of roadworks that can be undertaken is ultimately controlled by the available funding. Therefore, the number of candidate projects is limited by this and the scope of condition inspections should reflect this. Beyond this project, the next step will be to run a pilot inspection program to test the framework. From there, a process of evaluation and review can be implemented to ensure that GRC benefits from the framework as much as possible. In conclusion, the establishment of a road condition assessment program for GRC is very much achievable in the short to medium term. This will lead to increased confidence in the outputs of the capital works programming process

Caution Ahead: Overdue Investments in New York's Aging Infrastructure

While Superstorm Sandy focused much-needed attention on key pieces of New York City's infrastructure, the city faces a number of other infrastructure vulnerabilities that have little to do with storm-preparedness -- from aging water mains and deteriorating roads to crumbling public schools. If left unchecked, they could wreak havoc on the city's economy and quality of life

Pacific highway glenugie: case study of the use of heavy duty granular pavement in northern NSW

In September 2011, the Glenugie upgrade of the Pacific Highway was completed. This upgraded section was effectively a trial to gain a better understanding of whether or not heavy duty granular pavement design would be a feasible option in Northern NSW. A considerable amount of time and effort was expended in the development of the standard and suitable gravels to meet this standard. In 2014, failures were first observed in the upgraded section of pavement at Glenugie in the form of flushing, rutting and shoving. Over the following year, these failures continued to deteriorate with pot holes forming in a number of areas. The objective of the project is to evaluate the pavement performance thus far and determine the mechanism which is the cause of any failure in the pavement. Examination of the root cause of the failure mechanism, with the aim of improving performance and maintenance of heavy duty granular pavements in Northern NSW in future. The project proposes to achieve this objective through carrying the following: . Research the background of Glenugie Pacific Highway upgrade and the relevant standards and specification regarding heavy duty granular pavement in NSW and surrounding states and territories. . Assessment of the pavement’s performance to date and the extent of the pavement failure in the segment of road of interest. This has been conducted using two sets of data: defect mapping from a visual inspection of the road and a data set from the RMS RAMS database including cracking, roughness and rutting data. . Assessment of the cause of the current failures and there root cause in areas of the Glenugie pavement. This assessment will be based on a range of soil testing which has been carried out by RMS in areas of the pavement which have shown a high rate of pavement failures and will utilise TSD data from the RMS RAMS data base. This test data will be used to compare with a range scientific literature, specifications and construction data to develop substantial theory supported by evidence as to the mechanism or mechanisms which is cause the failures in these areas of pavement. Overall the study shows that pavement at Glenugie is performing below expectations. With the primary cause of the rutting and failures being the breakdown of material and associated reduction in shear strength and modulus of the material. The evidence presented report also identifies that the secondary cause of failures is likely to be due to moisture content of the pavement material. This is supported be the defection data which indicates that earthworks upper zone or subgrade material are unlikely to be the cause of the failures

Crossroads 2000 Proceedings, 1998

Crossroads 2000 was the second biennial transportation research conference cosponsored by the Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE) at Iowa State University and the Iowa Department of Transportation. This proceedings is the set of papers presented at the conference. Twenty-five categories of papers were presented in five concurrent sessions. Reflecting the increasingly critical role of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) in maintaining and enhancing transportation safety and efficiency, one category in each concurrent session addressed an area of ITS. However, papers were included from all areas of interest, ranging from transportation infrastructure design to transportation policy. The proceedings contains 58 papers

Identification of cost-effective pavement management systems strategies a reliable tool to enhance pavement management implementations

Modeling asset deterioration is a key business process within Transportation Asset Management. Road agencies should budget a large amount of public money to reduce the number of accidents and achieve a high level of service of the road system. Managing and preserving those investments is crucial, even more in the actual panorama of limiting funding. Therefore, roadway agencies have to increase their efforts on monitoring pavement networks and implementing data processing tools to promote cost-effective Pavement Management System (PMS) strategies. A comprehensive PMS database, in fact, ensures reliable decisions based on survey data and sets rules and procedures to analyze data systematically. However, the development of adequate pavement deterioration prediction models has proven to be difficult, because of the high variability and uncertainty in data collection and interpretation, and because of the large quantity of data information from a wide variety of sources to be processed. This research proposes a comprehensive methodology to design and implement pavement management strategies at the network level, based on road agency local conditions. Such methodology includes the identification of suitable indexes for the pavement condition assessment, the design of strategies to collect pavement data for the agency maintenance systems, the development of data quality and data cleansing criteria to support data processing and, at last, the implementation spatial location procedures to integrate pavement data involved in the comprehensive PMS. This work develops network-level pavement deterioration models, and reviews road agency preservation policies, to evaluate the effectiveness of maintenance treatment, which is essential for a cost-effective PMS. It is expected that the resulting methodology and the developed applications, product of this research, will constitute a reliable tool to support agencies in their effort to implement their PMS

Road Surface Defect Detection -- From Image-based to Non-image-based: A Survey

Ensuring traffic safety is crucial, which necessitates the detection and prevention of road surface defects. As a result, there has been a growing interest in the literature on the subject, leading to the development of various road surface defect detection methods. The methods for detecting road defects can be categorised in various ways depending on the input data types or training methodologies. The predominant approach involves image-based methods, which analyse pixel intensities and surface textures to identify defects. Despite their popularity, image-based methods share the distinct limitation of vulnerability to weather and lighting changes. To address this issue, researchers have explored the use of additional sensors, such as laser scanners or LiDARs, providing explicit depth information to enable the detection of defects in terms of scale and volume. However, the exploration of data beyond images has not been sufficiently investigated. In this survey paper, we provide a comprehensive review of road surface defect detection studies, categorising them based on input data types and methodologies used. Additionally, we review recently proposed non-image-based methods and discuss several challenges and open problems associated with these techniques.Comment: Survey paper