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- [Narrator] Including interstates,
Texas has more than 80,000 miles of roadways statewide.
The most of any state in the nation.
Keeping tabs of needed repairs can be time consuming.
The Texas Department of Transportation,
with help from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
is applying proven technologies like LIDAR
in new ways to facilitate maintenance activities,
including reducing assessment time.
- LIDAR, mobile LIDAR in particular,
is a tool that allows us to collect all
of this geometric data at highway speeds,
so we can throw it on a truck,
we can drive at highway speeds,
we can collect all of this geometric data
and then we can use that data to look
at how surface drainage will flow across the roadway.
- We had a stretcher roadway that had a lot of run off
the roads, and we were observing it,
we were looking at it in the rain,
but we were concerned that we were missing something
that there was something there based off of
the wet surface crash reduction program
and it being a repeat location.
- The main thing we were trying to accomplish in particular
for the Atlanta district, which is where we started out
was to identify potentially critical drainage basins
on some of their roadways.
So, where is it on their network
that the geometry might be contributing
to hydroplaning potential.
And so to accomplish it, we deployed our mobile LIDAR.
We went up there,
they told us the roads that they were interested in,
and we did kind of a mass network scan,
collected a lot of data,
came back in, processed it, looked at all of it,
ran it through our algorithms that we had developed
and then identified the drainage basins
that we thought the district should look
at doing something about on their network.
- So here he had all the LIDAR data,
he was running the algorithms and trying
to find those locations that we both have incidents
and there seem to be issues with water, possibly geometric
possibly rutting things to that effect,
and all of that together, the culmination of several items
making a location that was considered
a location that was prone or possible location.
- Because we have this technology
it allows us to go out there and identify these basins,
and then work with Tex DoT to hone that solution
and say, oh, the real problem exists at this point,
and this is why that problem exists.
Here are some potential solutions that you can deploy,
and then it allows Tex DoT to budget appropriately
and manage their budgets.
It might be that you don't need to repave
three or four miles of the roadway
if you can just work in maybe two or three tenths of a mile.
- This could potentially provide a bird's eye view
of locations that are questionable.
To find those locations,
that's what this research is about.
That's the locations that may need improvement
that we have a chance to make a difference
in safety for the traveling public.
- Wet weather crashes are a very real issue
for every user out there,
and there are things that the managing agency
can do to mitigate wet weather crashes,
and we can give you the data
that can help make those decisions
on where to go work and what to do.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the Tex DoT Research Library
at the link show below.