Vehicle-as-a-Sensor – Road Condition Monitoring Program

Category

Excellence in Transport Data Award

Submitting Organisation

Cisco

Collaborating Partners

Transport for NSW

Australian Road Research Board

University of NSW

Poor road surface conditions and potholes have a detrimental impact for customer journeys – not only do they cause costly vehicle damage but they also are a safety concern as drivers swerve to avoid hitting them. They also increase fuel consumption and leaving them unattended can degrade the underlying road surface quality. Fixing potholes is the largest cost in road maintenance.

Cisco, Transport for NSW, Australian Road Research Board and University of NSW have created a solution which uses the bus network to digitise the road surface and identify potholes. As part of a trial, a number of buses were outfitted with a Cisco IoT Edge Router with an in-built GPS and accelerometer sensor to initially look at location services. However, following the recent floods in NSW the rich data from the buses were used to scan the road surface and turn the movement of the vehicle into an index - digitising the road surface. Australian Road Research Board and University of NSW both played an important role in correlating the bus data to the RRI historical data. Typically, the road surface is surveyed every 1 to 4 years. Now, using the bus network it is being scanned every 30 mins.

As population growth increases and travel patterns change in a post pandemic world the roads are becoming increasingly important in the safe delivery of people and goods. The quality of those assets and ability to support rising number of vehicles will continue to be important and hence he ability to digitise the road and understand in real-time the performance of the asset and identify incidents is vital. This solution is a unique way in which to digitise the road and provide those insights into asset performance and create safer and more enjoyable journeys for the whole community.