India is an emerging and is getting renowned for its development, and achieving a reputable position in the world’s politics and economy. The main path towards a country’s success is the day-to-day trade activities that take place. In success of these trades, Transport plays a very vital and boastful boon to the trades across the country. In countries such as India, major role is played by mostly Road Infrastructure and Railways.
Here in this blog, we are focussing on the Road Infrastructures. The Roads connecting various parts of India are developed and developing under the Ministry of Road, Transport & Highways. It will be not a wrong statement if said that the department is working so efficiently, that they are achieving world records in construction of the roads.
The department/ ministry is run by Honourable Mr. Nitin Gadkari, a man of great vision and aptitude to take that vision towards achievement. The ministry under the guidance and management of Nitin Ji, is not only achieving the records for construction but is also keenly focussed on the utmost quality the department can achieve from the constructed roads. This quality is the most crucial requirement in such projects, as the vehicles that will be travelling on them will be mostly Heavy Transport Vehicle. Due to the TO and FRO of such vehicles on huge scales leads to the increase in Roughness, Rutting Distresses (viz. Cracking, Potholes, Bleeding, Surface Failures, Rut, Macrotexture, Potholes, Ravelling, Bleeding, Lane Markings (Not Classification), Curb and Drop Off, Sealed Cracks, Geometry, Roughness, Shoving, Joints, Pumping, Man Made Objects (MMO), Patch, Water Entrapment etc.)
Ministry of Road, Transport & Highways – has made it compulsory to use the new technologies for inspecting the quality and condition and have enlisted some companies who are dealing in such services. One of the technologies is the Network Survey Vehicle; it’s a special purpose vehicle mounted with instruments which are capturing the roads conditions and corridor in the form of videography, photography and photogrammetric view. The vehicle also captures the IRI index of the pavement i.e., roughness, cracks, potholes etc.
The functioning of the vehicle is very simple, as all we need to do is to drive the vehicle where the condition survey needs to be done. In India, there are two technologies which are being used for the condition survey. One is the LCMS System (Laser Crack Measurement System) and the other is LiDAR System. With the use of both of these technologies, one can achieve a accuracy of 2mm cracks and can easily be assessed in the views with the use of specific software.
The vehicles use is not limited to pavement or corridor survey of roads, but can also be used for assessment of pavement and condition survey for airstrips to help manage their airfield strips. Pavement managers use objective pavement condition data to assess the current state of their pavements and to proactively program maintenance and rehabilitation in such a way that benefit is maximized for the limited funds available.
The data collected in the condition survey will help in maintaining up to date asset inventory and road assets condition status. Apart from delivering vital information on road network planning, providing relevant information on other aspects such as road safety measures, etc. it will also assist in developing highway maintenance strategies, analysis of maintenance and selection of optimal maintenance regime.
Due to some proactive measures taken by NHAI (MoRTH), the data collected by the NSVs will be uploaded on NHAI’s websites artificial intelligence portal Data Lake. These data will be analuzed by the Road Asset Management Cell (RAMS Cell) and assess the condition of the road to decide on the maintenance work. As NHAI claims, these data will help the agency to maintain up to date asset inventory and road assets condition status.
India is one of the countries with alarming rate of road accidents that lead to a huge number of deaths every year. Besides that, many people are seriously injured due to the road accidents resulted by the poor-quality roads. Now it’s the rainy season, and the condition of roads can be observed by every citizen in India. By using such state of the art, high tech equipment, roads conditions can be precisely improved by respective regular scheduled maintenance.
