Analysis on the deterioration of road pavements through laser scanning technology

The need to organise and rationalise maintenance interventions on road pavements, through management systems that are cost-effective and functional, has led to the setting up of Pavement Management Systems (PMS). These systems consider the objectives of transportation-related policies, as well as budget limitations of road infrastructure Management Authorities. They also provide for the arrangement of urgent maintenance works, when the paving deterioration is particularly harsh. In addition, there is a need to set up a PMS according to the actual situations and to plan outlay, times and feasibility. This paper presents a methodological approach to survey the deterioration state of road paving and to manage the maintenance intervention through a non-destructive system based on terrestrial laser scanner surveys. The images related to the deterioration state have been acquired by different resolution sensors; segmentation, extraction and classification operations have also been done. The images have been compressed at different levels, in order to extract the deterioration state information, through edge extraction, smoothing and quality enhancement operators. The deteriorated road surface is acquired as a dense point cloud, for producing metrically correct 3-D models. The geometric three-dimensional information, acquired by the laser scanner sensor, is integrated with the real radiometric information of the object in order to obtain truly photorealistic digital 3-D objects. It is therefore possible to extract metric information relative to the deteriorated state from a quantitative point of view, defining the deterioration severity level. The data, related metadata, images and 3-D global models can be managed by a Relational DataBase Management System (RDBMS), which allows both technicians and managers to evaluate the deterioration evolution over time and to plan the most suitable maintenance for the pavement restoration.