Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.
The remoteness of the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), similar to parts of Africa, creates
difficulties, both logistically and economically, to undertake detailed in-country
investigations on the road networks. Therefore, rapid assessments of the condition of the
existing road pavements are required to determine the level of required donor investments
to maintain the integrity of the road network. This paper explores the use of Roadroid, a
simple android application, as a low cost solution to evaluating road roughness in the
Pacific region. The case study presented in this paper demonstrates the use of the
Roadroid application on the road network in Kiribati, one of the smaller and debatably the
most remote PIC. The results from the study discuss the performance and practicability of
the android application, primarily as an Information Quality Level-3/4 information device, in
the Pacific region.
The results from the field surveys supported the delivery of an Information Quality Level-
3/4 device. The large variation reported in the surveys between the International
Roughness Index collected was attributed to the small sampling intervals embedded in the
device. Post-processing of the data, which averaged the unfiltered data across one
kilometre sub-sections along the main road in South Tarawa, reduced the variability
reported across the road network and provided results consistent with what experienced
evaluators expected. Field surveys were conducted with the smartphone device and the
data was analysed post survey. However, the statistical reliability of the device was less
satisfactory when the roughness measurements were compared across various speeds.
However, within the accuracy limits of an Information Quality Level-3/4 device, considered
to be ±20 % of the International Roughness Index, the equipment more than satisfied the
need.
Roadroid can assist the asset management of road networks by offering a low-cost
solution to monitoring and reporting on the roughness condition of pavements in the
Pacific region, as well as in other developing regions. Although this paper reports on the
performance of the device, further comparison is recommended to confirm the reported
International Roughness Index values accurately reflect the condition of the road
pavement. To do so, it is recommended to comparatively study the results from the
Roadroid android application with those from specialized instrumented vehicles, such as a
laser profilometer.
