Overview
Rising traffic volumes that cause increased wear on roads, combined with dwindling government budgets, and not least an increased exposure to the effects of climate change make the maintenance of road infrastructure a very challenging task for road operators.
The project "Integrated planning of road projects (IPS)" takes the tensions arising from these premises as the starting point for the development of a new approach for the optimal use of available scarce resources, with the objective of simultaneously reducing maintenance costs, improving the quality of road infrastructure and minimizing the negative effects on traffic during building-phases.
The focus of IPS is on the development of a unified data and processing model for the integrated planning of road construction projects, in the sense of "Building Information Modelling (BIM)", as well as the design of a decision supporting planning system for the automated evaluation of various building scenarios in terms of cost, quality and traffic impact. This includes the following partial results:
- A concept for a crowdsourcing platform for the collection and pre-classification of road damage with mobile devices, for the use by interested amateurs as well as by professionals.
- A concept for the automated development of possible building site configurations based on the assessed damage. The concept includes a method for the detailed classification of damages as well as the deduction of specifications for procurement.
- A planning algorithm for the automated evaluation of various site configurations in terms of duration, cost and effect on traffic flow.
In order to evaluate configurations planning tools for single building sites are combined with traffic simulations so as to create an integrated picture of various construction projects and their interactions. The evaluation of project results and a validation of developed concepts and procedures will be conducted with the help of scenarios that have been deduced from real test data - provided by interested road operators. The project IPS will create the foundations for the later development of production grade tools for road operators that allow for the efficient and high-quality preparation and procurement of maintenance projects in the asphalt construction business. The project is based on the high-quality standards set by the German quality initiative for asphalt road construction.