Applicability of smartphone-based roughness data for rural road pavement condition evaluation

Abstract

Rural roads play a pivotal role in facilitating connectivity for the rural communities by providing access for their economic and social needs. Due to lack of funding and other resources, maintenance decision making is often done in an ad-hoc and subjective manner. Moreover, the inability to collect extensive data as needed to run most pavement management systems and technical expertise required has resulted in the low usage of such systems by local road agencies. Therefore, there is a need to develop a cost-effective, simplified approach for network-level pavement condition evaluation to assist in pavement maintenance management. The study explores the applicability of smartphone-based roughness data to assess the pavement condition of rural roads, and it is compared with the results from a Class III type roughness measurement equipment. Result show it has good correlation, which suggests it has sufficient accuracy when compared to the conventional roughness measurement methods. Furthermore, it is established that roughness results accurately represent the presence of pavement distresses and the overall pavement condition in the rural roads that are considered in maintenance decision making. The findings from the study would provide a cost-effective pavement condition data collection method that can be adopted for network-level condition evaluation in low volume roads.