Construction and Usage of Three-dimensional Data for Road Maintenance Based on Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Photogrammetry

Roads must be safe and maintained in good condition. Maintenance management is an essential operation that must be carried out effectively for maintaining, repairing, and rehabilitating roads. If large-scale damage occurs to... [ view full abstract ]

Roads must be safe and maintained in good condition. Maintenance management is an essential operation that must be carried out effectively for maintaining, repairing, and rehabilitating roads. If large-scale damage occurs to a road in an urban area and it cannot be used, many aspects of life may be affected. Thus, it is important to protect roads from large-scale damage and to carry out road maintenance in order to maintain services for the public. In addition, it is necessary to accumulate information produced during the entire life cycle of a road in order to analyze problems and solutions within a temporal sequence and to maintain roads strategically and effectively. Engineers should be able to use three-dimensional data not only to virtually review the design of a facility but also to analyze building operations and performance. Three-dimensional data tend to be applied to a particular phase of a construction project. Using three-dimensional data will thus improve the efficiency of operations and maintenance.

In road maintenance, it is necessary to construct an environment that manages three-dimensional data and maintenance information. A road management system comprises functions for planning, design, construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation of roads. A fundamental requirement of such a system is the ability to support the modeling and management of design and construction information, and to enable the exchange of such information among different project disciplines in an effective and efficient manner.The primary objective of this research project is to propose a road maintenance framework using three-dimensional point cloud data. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and photogrammetry technologies are used to survey road structures. Three-dimensional data for the Shiraito Highland Way in Japan are constructed using point cloud data generated by TLS. Shiraito Highland Way is approximately 10 km in length, and its elevation varies between 1000 m and 1400 m. The measuring range of TLS on a road varies from approximately 10 m to 100 m. Point cloud data are combined using coordinate points. In addition, the data are used for road maintenance, taking into consideration data size and accuracy. Road maintenance information can be referenced at any three-dimensional point in the point cloud data. Coordinates of the three-dimensional data are constructed on the basis of the structure from motion (SfM) range-imaging technique of photogrammetry using video camera data. PhotoScan Professional is used for SfM. This paper evaluates the accuracy of the point cloud data of laser scanning and photogrammetry for road maintenance.