Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/27856
“W e can’t do it this way anymore,” said Tracy Wingate, director of the city of Houston Street Maintenance Program, after a phone call in October 2006 with a city councilman who wanted to know the condition of a certain segment of road for budgeting and plan- ning purposes. He said it to himself, but it was what almost everyone in his department knew to be the hard truth. “This way” referred to manual “windshield” inspec- tions of roads followed by overstuffing a Microsoft Access database on a file share with data-intensive results and then performing manual searches to respond to questions like the councilman’s. To find the “correct” answer, Wingate’s team had to rely on a lot of pieces falling into place. First, they had to hope that the different inspectors who viewed the same segment of road rated it the same, or at least similarly. Second, they had to hope that the city’s program administrator could use his unique knowledge of the unorganized file-share sys- tem housing all the spreadsheets with the pavement ratings to find the workbook, line(s) and column(s) with the answer. Third, they had to hope that the data were new enough to accurately reflect that segment’s current condition. The best-case scenario: the councilman would get an answer in about three weeks. The worst-case scenario: the answer was impossible to find or inaccurate. Wingate’s realization led him to call Raj Shah, senior database analyst, Public Works Information Technology, Houston. “It’s like the guy with the messy desk who won’t let anyone clean it because he won’t know where anything is anymore,” adds Wingate. “We just shouldn’t operate like that.” Shah agreed and was asked to work on all options. Through a request for proposal process, the city reviewed various alternatives ranging from outsourcing the entire data collection and management process to purchasing software and hardware that would enable them to automate most of the work. Finding a Solution After doing some research and hearing presentations from several qualified vendors, city officials realized that they could get the best of both worlds: accurate, reliable and timely pavement data collection and shar- ing as well as a solution the city could call its own. lThe city of Houston’s auto- mated pavement-condition data collection vehicle (top) features an Immersive Media 360-degree camera with 11 lenses (inset) mounted on top of the van. A laser profiler is mounted on the front of the van, and GPS equipment is on the roof (bottom). Similar to solutions owned and maintained by state Departments of Transportation or the federal govern- ment, the city’s new solution started with technology procurement and hardware. Working with International Cybernetics and Idea Integration, the city purchased its own van equipped with a road profiler, GPS and DMI equipment for loca- tion and distance measurement, automatic crack detection, data storage, and an Immersive Media 360- degree HD video camera. “We have 16,000 lane miles of roadway here at the city of Houston,” notes Wingate. “We looked at the numbers and realized that, over time, this is the most cost-effective solution for us. It’s something we M A R C H 2 O 1 1 / W W W . G E O P L A C E . C O M 29