The road network is one of the most essential types of infrastructure that links our regions. It allows the efficient movement of people and gods promotes economic growth. To ensure smooth movement of people and goods, the roads network needed to be maintained. In order to facilitate road maintenance activities, road pavement condition inspection needs to be done regularly. An important indicator of road condition is the measure of its roughness. The World Bank (WB) established a standard to measure road roughness called International Road Roughness Index (IRI).
Several types of IRI measuring equipment exist in the market. A typical road inspection vehicle equipped multiple sensors can cost up to one million US dollars. Developing countries find this steep expense to be a challenge or roadblock to monitor their road networks’ health. Furthermore, these road survey equipment are often composed of complex components which are difficult to setup and maintain.
The study aims develop an innovative and alternative way to measure road roughness without the use of expensive road survey vehicle using smartphones and GIS techniques. In order to validate the proposed smartphones road roughness survey methodology, its results was compared with results from IRI survey using standard roughness measuring equipment. An iPhone 4S was used to test this on major in Metro Manila and parts of Bulacan.
Roughness measurements were compiled along the case study roads using a widely accepted IRI survey running side by the side with the proposed Smartphone Road Roughness Survey Method were used as the basis to come up with an IRI equation used by the proposed method. Based on the results, the smartphone road roughness method has proven that the smartphone has a viable accelerometer and GPS built-in that can be correlated to traditional equipment for measuring road roughness.