Current practices and new approaches within condition monitoring of gravel roads

摘要

High quality information is essential for the efficient decision making. Road condition is, together with traffic frequency, commonly used as input for classifying road status. Road condition is also a major input for the maintenance executor (vehicle operator) when deciding on maintenance actions, such as amount of gravel to replenish. With better condition related information, the maintenance execution as well as maintenance planning could be greatly improved. The current deficiencies in gravel road condition monitoring methods and technologies are described in this paper, and an approach for objective measurement of gravel road condition is proposed, including new measurement techniques and systems as well as information processing for decision making. This is realized by utilizing research findings from the area of signal processing, maintenance engineering, and information systems engineering in the specific context of gravel road monitoring, thus utilizing available technologies and methods as well as physics.