Road Maintenance with Opti-Grade®: Maintaining Road Networks to Achieve the Best Value

2003 ◽  
Vol 1819 (1) ◽  
pp. 282-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Brown ◽  
Steve Mercier ◽  
Yves Provencher

Road management systems rely on the availability of quality information to make good decisions. A lack of information on the condition of the Canadian forest industry’s unpaved road network led to inappropriate management decisions. To fill this information gap the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) developed the Opti-Grade road management system. Opti-Grade is a low-cost tool that provides information about the road roughness and travel speed as the equipped road user’s vehicle travels on the road network. This information can then be used to focus grading activities where they will have the greatest impact on the road condition for the money invested. Further, over time, a history of the behavior of the roads can be built. With this history, degradation models can quickly and easily be produced to see which segments of the road network degrade the quickest and the most frequently. Problem segments can be identified. Valuable road evaluation budgets can then be focused on those sections to determine the cause of the problem. That will allow precious rehabilitation budgets to be focused where they can have the greatest impact. Opti-Grade is currently used by a large sector of FERIC member forest companies with payback periods shorter than 4 months. FERIC continues to improve the software to manage the data from the Opti-Grade system and increase the abilities of the decision support tools in the software.

Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miha Ambrož ◽  
Uroš Hudomalj ◽  
Alexander Marinšek ◽  
Roman Kamnik

Measuring friction between the tyres of a vehicle and the road, often and on as many locations on the road network as possible, can be a valuable tool for ensuring traffic safety. Rather than by using specialised equipment for sequential measurements, this can be achieved by using several low-cost measuring devices on vehicles that travel on the road network as part of their daily assignments. The presented work proves the hypothesis that a low cost measuring device can be built and can provide measurement results comparable to those obtained from expensive specialised measuring devices. As a proof of concept, two copies of a prototype device, based on the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, have been developed, built and tested. They use accelerometers to measure vehicle braking deceleration and include a global positioning receiver for obtaining the geolocation of each test. They run custom-developed data acquisition software on the Linux operating system and provide automatic measurement data transfer to a server. The operation is controlled by an intuitive user interface consisting of two illuminated physical pushbuttons. The results show that for braking tests and friction coefficient measurements the developed prototypes compare favourably to a widely used professional vehicle performance computer.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Sazali ◽  
◽  
Bagus Hario Setiadji ◽  
Bambang Haryadi ◽  
◽  
...  

The use of budget in road management must be effective and efficient by providing the optimal pavement performance values. The problem in cost optimization of the road handling programs in West Bangka Regency is the lack of information regarding with the changes in conditions that will occur in the future due to the pattern of road handling that carried out, so that required a method that capable to predict road pavement conditions. The purpose of this study is to determine the cost of future road handling programs based on the value of road pavement conditions from the prediction results using Markov chain method. Modeling requires an initial condition vector and a Transition Probability Matrix (TPM). The main data used in the development of this model is pavement condition data and road handling history data for 2012 - 2017. The application of the Markov chain model on the road network in West Bangka Regency in the period of 2018 - 2022 shows a drastic decrease in pavement conditions, if not conducted the handling action on the road damage, with a change in the value of Good (B) condition from 63.7% in 2017 become 12.3% in 2022. Based on a simulation of a road management program during this period, produce an estimated cost of Rp. 45.338.471.000 by providing a change in the value of Good (B) conditions at the end of 2022 by 58.6%. The results of the study are expected could assist road managers in the context of the preparation of an optimal road management program.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. qjegh2020-064 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Hearn ◽  
J. Howell ◽  
T. Hunt

Landslides pose significant hazards on the road network of Laos. These landslides frequently block access and occasionally result in the subsidence or loss of the carriageway. Several slope stabilization trials focusing on the use of bioengineering techniques and low-cost engineering measures were implemented in 2007 and 2008. Heavy rains in 2018 caused numerous landslides on the road network and a review was undertaken of the performance of the slope stabilization trial sites implemented ten years earlier. The outcome has proved very positive overall and vindicates the efforts made to understand the causes and mechanisms of the observed slope failures and the ground conditions that pertained. The outcomes of this research have been used to strengthen practice in Laos, and further afield, and to provide a valuable basis for future practice.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
Marijana Mošić ◽  
Draženko Glavić

Knowing the current atmospheric conditions of the roads is of great importance, both for road managers and for road users. RWIS stations record all relevant local atmospheric conditions in real time and transmit this information to control centers. This information has a dominant application in planning activities related to road maintenance in winter conditions. An analysis of the literature relating to the costs and benefits of RWIS stations indicates that their implementation in the transport infrastructure is not only economically profitable, but also offers a number of benefits such as more efficient road maintenance and facilitated organization of available funds, all for the purpose of winter road maintenance. Implementation of this system contributes to the safety of users on the public road network, as well as to the reduction of the number of traffic accidents in which the road and its condition are recognized as the cause. Twenty-eight meteorological stations were installed on the road network of the Republic of Serbia. On the basis of the historical data on the state of the roads from the mentioned stations in the previous period of winter maintenance and an individual implementation cost, the cost-effectiveness analysis of RWIS in the Republic of Serbia was performed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianka Tallita Passos ◽  
Wemerson Delcio Parreira ◽  
Anita Maria da Rocha Fernandes ◽  
Eros Comunello

The road infrastructure conditions are directly related to the safetyand operational cost of transportation. Potholes are defects in thepaving that affect safety on the road. Therefore, identifying potholesis an important step in defining road maintenance and interventionstrategies. Among the approaches used to detect defects in roadsare vibration techniques, laser scanning and 3D reconstruction, andfinally methods that are vision-based. These vision-based methodsutilize image processing, considered low cost and that can be performedby common two-dimensional cameras. This research aimsto combine digital image processing and deep learning concepts facilitatingthe recognition of pothole-like defects in road images withasphalt paving. In order to carry out these experiments, differentnetwork architectures were used.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002252662097950
Author(s):  
Fredrik Bertilsson

This article contributes to the research on the expansion of the Swedish post-war road network by illuminating the role of tourism in addition to political and industrial agendas. Specifically, it examines the “conceptual construction” of the Blue Highway, which currently stretches from the Atlantic Coast of Norway, traverses through Sweden and Finland, and enters into Russia. The focus is on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s. The article identifies three overlapping meanings attached to the Blue Highway: a political agenda of improving the relationships between the Nordic countries, industrial interests, and tourism. Political ambitions of Nordic community building were clearly pronounced at the onset of the project. Industrial actors depended on the road for the building of power plants and dams. The road became gradually more connected with the view of tourism as the motor of regional development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-278
Author(s):  
Ariane Dupont-Kieffer ◽  
Sylvie Rivot ◽  
Jean-Loup Madre

The golden age of road demand modeling began in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s in the face of major road construction needs. These macro models, as well as the econometrics and the data to be processed, were provided mainly by engineers. A division of tasks can be observed between the engineers in charge of estimating the flows within the network and the transport economists in charge of managing these flows once they are on the road network. Yet the inability to explain their decision-making processes and individual drives gave some room to economists to introduce economic analysis, so as to better understand individual or collective decisions between transport alternatives. Economists, in particular Daniel McFadden, began to offer methods to improve the measure of utility linked to transport and to inform the engineering approach. This paper explores the challenges to the boundaries between economics and engineering in road demand analysis.


Author(s):  
Manolo Dulva Hina ◽  
Hongyu Guan ◽  
Assia Soukane ◽  
Amar Ramdane-Cherif

Advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) is an electronic system that helps the driver navigate roads safely. A typical ADAS, however, is suited to specific brands of vehicle and, due to proprietary restrictions, has non-extendable features. Project CASA is an alternative, low-cost generic ADAS. It is an app deployable on smartphone or tablet. The real-time data needed by the app to make sense of its environment are stored in the vehicle or on the cloud, and are accessible as web services. They are used to determine the current driving context, and, if needed, decide actions to prevent an accident or keep road navigation safe. Project CASA is an undertaking of a consortium of industrial and academic partners. A use case scenario is tested in the laboratory (virtual) and on the road (actual) to validate the appropriateness of CASA. It is a contribution to safe driving. CASA’s contribution also lies in its approach in the semantic modeling of the context of the environment, the vehicle and the driver, and on the modeling of rules for fusion of data and fission process yielding an action to be implemented. In addition, CASA proposes a secured means of transmitting data using light, via light fidelity (LiFi), itself an alternative means of wireless vehicle–smartphone communication.


Author(s):  
R. S. Durov ◽  
◽  
E. V. Varnakova ◽  
K. O. Kobzev ◽  
◽  
...  

Introduction. One of the most pressing socio-economic problems is the state of the environment, which affects the living conditions of many people. The article deals with the problem areas of the intersection of 20-ya Liniya street – Sholokhov Avenue in Rostov-on-Don. Problem Statement. The purpose of this paper is to improve environmental safety at the intersection of 20-ya Liniya street – Sholokhov Avenue in Rostov-on-Don by reducing emissions from road transport through the proposed measures to reorganize traffic on this section of the road network. Theoretical Part. The article provides an assessment of environmental and road safety on the road network section before applying the proposed measures. The measures are listed and justified that would help improve the conditions for road transport at the selected intersection and reduce emissions from road transport, which would improve environmental safety. The calculation of environmental indicators was made after the proposed measures to reduce NOx emissions by cars. Conclusion. The article analyzes the environmental indicators before and after the events, and then compares them. Based on the analysis and calculations, it is determined how much the proposed measures to optimize traffic will help reduce NOx emissions by cars.


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