(Calming Music Playing)
- Thanks to technology,
TxDOT has improved the way it monitors roadways.
This new and enhanced road condition data is the basis
for a major maintenance project conducted by
researchers at the University of Texas.
It's designed to help TxDOT be more accurate in determining
and predicting maintenance needs.
- So they need to predict what's the
estimated payment condition in the next year or
two or three or four.
The key is to predict on an accurate
manner and to minimize the uncertainty of this predictions.
- This project was designed to take the payment data
and make updates of the payment prediction models.
So that way, we have a more accurate prediction of
the future payment conditions. And so
we can better allocate the money, limited money to the
right sections and the right time to get
most cost effective results.
- The data analysis techniques have evolved enormously
in the past 10, 20 years.
So we were able to use data-mining techniques,
very advanced statistical models and artificial intelligent
tools as well to develop our models.
And one of the advantage of these new models that we develop
is that in some cases for some payments,
we managed to reduce this uncertainty.
- Now we have a ARVR,
what we call automated, uh,
3D laser technology
uh, equipped vehicles, and drive down the road at
highway speed and collect the data continuously.
- On the one hand, we have better data quality.
On the other hand today, as compared with 10 years ago,
there is many more
advanced data analysis
techniques that we could put our hands on.
And that is why the models today
can predict, eh, in a much more accurate way.
- The new model versus old model, we see the improvement,
uh, but you know, the system is a whole,
and we need to consider not just the prediction models.
We also need to consider another important piece,
which is the decision trees.
So that worked together to make recommendations.
- We, we do hope that this project received some further
consideration and it's implemented because as I say,
the research is done, it has been paid off.
It's finished. So now implementation
could take a couple of years and check out how
these new models perform relative to the old ones.
But by looking at the data, by looking at the models,
you can see that the predictions are more accurate
and the potential for savings are there.
- For more information, and to find the
publications for this project, please visit the
TxDOT research library at the link shown below.