Probabilistic management of pavement defects with image processing techniques

Abstract

Pavement management has traditionally relied on human-based decisions. In many countries, however, the pavement stock has recently increased, while the number of management experts has declined, posing the challenge of how to efficiently manage the larger stock with fewer resources. Compared to efficient computer-based techniques, human-based methods are more prone to errors that compromise analysis and decisions. This research built a robust probabilistic pavement management model with a safety metric output using inputs from image processing tested against the judgment of experts. The developed model optimized road pavement safety. The study explored image processing techniques considering the trade-off between processing cost and output accuracy, with annotation precision and intersection over union (IoU) set objectively. The empirical applicability of the model is shown for selected roads in Japan.

Keywords

• pavement management
• image processing
• objective annotation and IoU
• expert validation