Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/27856
Asset Management images—on the relative importance and weighting of these factors. A rigorous testing process produced a successful end result. A two-man team from the city could operate the van and, simply by driving, produce an objective rating not subject to human judgment. And they could do so without the safety concerns inherent in the old system; inspectors were accustomed to judging sev- eral lanes of pavement from a distance. Proprietary technology called Crackscope is another key part of the solution. It automatically detects cracks in the pavement from images captured during vehicle operation. Another feature of the city’s new solution is a 360- degree camera. With 11 lenses, it captures immersive high-resolution video of the surroundings, allowing the city to tag assets from a workstation and investigate resident questions or complaints without travelling to specific locations. The video and pavement-condition information is post- processed after a day’s run, and the video is created and compressed for Web viewing. The distress data are auto- matically partitioned by street segment using the GIS information collected from the GPS and DMI devices. All the data are stored in a Microsoft SQL Server Database and a separate 14TB file-storage system. lUsing Microsoft technology, city of Houston program administrators can search and run reports on the condition of Houston streets (top). Using a Web application (bottom), city-owned assets can be added and tracked. Data Interface When the city could capture a condition rating for each segment, vendors and city stakeholders moved to Phase 2: data visualization. Idea Integration built a custom Web-based application that allows the city to view, share and report on the data collected automati- cally by the van. The look is clean and simple, with a city map as the primary interface. Users see street segments color-coded based on the level of distress, and they can zoom to an area to see details of specific streets. Users can “drill down” into specific sections to see pavement scores, the 360-degree video of that section and pavement images. City administrators can search by address, street name, council district or Key Map grid number. Reporting is powered by SQL Server Reporting can own, and surrounding municipalities have already expressed interest in renting the vehicle from us so they can drive their streets and assess pavement con- dition in a timely and accurate way.” Proving its Worth The project’s first checkpoint was to prove to the city that the new van could accurately produce a street rating for a single road segment. With direc- tion from the city, the Idea Integration team wrote an algorithm—assimilating rutting data, International Roughness Index data, cracking data and pavement 30 G E O W O R L D / M A R C H 2 O 1 1 Services and includes pavement-condition reports to help plan which roads need attention as well as quality- assurance reports to help collect data. Reports can be exported into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or several other formats. Asset tagging was built into the solution for future use. City employees can use the 360-degree video to mark fire hydrants, storm sewers, manholes, signage, etc., providing a cost-effective way to accurately account for planning, engineering, stormwater and traffic assets. Later, they can search for an asset by street section, inspect an asset by video, upload multiple assets or drill down using the map interface.