GPS World

Tag: highway construction

  • European PAVE-SCAN project aims to increase transport efficiency, safety

    European PAVE-SCAN project aims to increase transport efficiency, safety

    The European Union PAVE-SCAN project aims to build European GNSS-based and AI-driven technologies to detect and assess roadway pavement problems.

    The proposed project aims for the development to market (TRL8-9) of European GNSS-based integrated low-cost sensor technologies and artificial-intelligence-driven open-architecture software solution — machine learning (ML) and machine vision (MV) — for the detection, classification and georeferencing of roadway pavement surface anomalies, and for the low-cost assessment of roadway pavements using participatory sensing.

    The proposed system is of practical importance because it provides continuous information about roadway pavement surface anomalies — valuable for efficiently monitoring the transport infrastructure and for public safety. The vision for roadway condition assessment using smartphone-like technology is under the hypothesis that such technology can be used for crowd-sourced data collection and analysis in GIS-based pavement management systems (PMS).

    “The developed technology and related transport informatics are disruptive technologies that have the potential to reshape the transport and infrastructure industries,” according to the project description.

    The project is funded under Horizon Europe; with the University of Cyprus Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering serving as a partner.

    The project’s objectives are outlined below.

    Table 1. Project objectives
    #Project ObjectiveWP
    1Near-real-time analysis and classification of roadway anomaliesWP3,WP4,WP5
    2Geospatial mapping of transport infrastructure, roadway anomalies and condition-assessment heatmapsWP3,WP4,WP5
    3Geospatial mapping of transport infrastructure, roadway anomalies and condition-assessment heatmapsWP3,WP4,WP5
    4Improved roadway management practices, prioritisation of public works & lower costsWP4
    5Reduction in the transport-related environmental footprint through improved O&M of transport infrastructure and of mass transitWP4,WP6,WP7
    6Reduction in roadway-assessment costs by utilization of a fleet of vehicles/buses as participatory sensorsWP5,WP6,WP7
    7Integration with national transport initiatives (e.g., National Single Access Point), & with Digital Twin platforms, for dynamically updated roadway-condition models, and improvements in transport safety through roadway improvementsWP4, WP5
    8Open-access data and APIsWP1, WP8
    9Product to market and ‘Product as a Service’ (PaaS) business modelWP8
    10Dissemination of project resultsWP1

  • Auto-scanning total stations working on China’s expressways

    Spectra Precision‘s Focus 35 robotic total stations are helping build the world’s largest expressway network. For instance, the Focus 35, with its time-saving automatic scan template, is checking the cross-section quality of the twin Nan Kunshan tunnels for the new six-lane Shazhan S14 regional highway.

    Excavation under Nankun Mountain for the twin tunnels, each 4.1 kilometers (km) long and each capable of carrying three lanes of vehicular traffic, began in September 2016.

    In the current second phase of construction, the Focus 35 is being used to gather data that will be used to compare the as-built tunnels to the design specifications to determine what adjustments to the tunnel surfaces may need to be made.

    The Focus 35 was selected for the scanning work because it offers a streamlined and efficient workflow that yields significant time-savings, the company said. The workflow of a conventional total station requires time-consuming manual scanning followed by export to a separate post-processing function after which a DXF file is generated.

    The Focus 35, with its Trimble Access Tunnel software, saves significant time because it automatically scans and directly generates DXF reports for submission to the contractor to check over-break and under-break values, the company said.

    When completed, the new six-lane 800-km Shazhan highway will connect Shantou and Zhanjiang, two important coastal cities in southern Guangdong province. The contractor for the Nan Kunshan tunnels is ChangDa Highway Engineering Co. Ltd.