The use of a smartphone as a potential tool for assessing pavement distresses: a case study of Kampala

Abstract

Maintaining road infrastructure in urban areas like Kampala, Uganda, is challenging due to the high costs and time involved in traditional road distress detection methods, such as visual inspection, manual measurements, and surface condition surveys. The International Roughness Index (IRI) serves as a crucial indicator of road condition and ride quality, playing a significant role in road maintenance decisions. Traditionally, IRI is computed from road profile measurements obtained using specialized equipment. However, a new avenue for assessing road roughness has emerged with the use of smartphones equipped with accelerometers. Matovu & Kilamba (2023) studied the feasibility of using smartphones as a cost-effective substitute for inertial profilers in evaluating pavement roughness and concluded that there is a linear correlation between the IRI values recorded from the inertial profiler and those recorded from smartphones, although the smartphone values were considerably lower. However, the accuracy of these systems can be affected by various factors such as road geometry parameters, including slopes, horizontal curves, and superelevation. If these systems are to be used for data collection (crowdsourcing), the reliability and consistency of smartphone-based IRI measurements must be examined, considering different road geometry parameters. This project aims to address this gap by evaluating whether smartphone-based techniques can serve as a cost-effective and reliable alternative to traditional methods for measuring pavement distress. By comparing smartphone techniques to conventional methods in terms of accuracy, ease of use, and cost, this study seeks to determine if smartphones can provide reliable data for road condition monitoring, ultimately contributing to more sustainable and responsive road maintenance practices in Uganda.