Road Surface Data Acquisition and Monitoring System

A robust and efficient road network and its accompanying infrastructure are essential for the economic growth of a country. An expansive and effective road network serves as a link between economically productive zones of a country, leading to an increase in specialization of manufacturing, productivity, and domestic trade. The improved mobility of citizens also leads to increased economic activity, in terms of economic migration and tourism. Thus, road networks are often called an economic lifeline for any nation. The safety of a country's citizens also depends upon the quality of its infrastructure. According to a report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways of India, over 50% of fatalities due to road accidents tend to affect an economically productive demographic of 18–25. Damaged roads also lead to decreased efficiency of a vehicle, increasing the cost of operation, increasing carbon emissions, and potentially shortening its usable lifetime. Thus, the monitoring of road networks for optimum operating conditions is essential for a country and its civic bodies. This paper describes a method for effective and automated monitoring of road conditions that uses a device mounted to a vehicle, which records incoming data streams of an accelerometer in the 3 spatial axes to collect data about the changes in acceleration, analyzes the acceleration data in real-time and reports anomalous road conditions to a private cloud server, along with tools for its analysis and visualization for timely and effective management.