Positioning and Imaging Sensors for Automated Asset Management of Transportation Facilities

Investment in physical transportation facilities represents the bulk of capital for the purpose of carrying goods and people. These facilities include roadway pavements, rail tracks, tunnels, bridges, and other roadside structures to support operation of vehicles. Condition survey of such facilities has become an important component in asset management. Despite the fact that tremendous progress has been made in the past few decades in technology development of condition surveys, there still exist various limitations in the field of automation. Many surveys are still conducted manually, which pose problems in areas such as cost, data repeatability, consistency, and safety. This paper introduces the general principles of sensor requirements for data collection and the necessary automation needs for data analysis. The focus of the paper is on roadway and rail systems, even though the sensors may be applicable to the survey of other facilities as well.