Developing a framework for using Structure-from-Motion techniques for Road Distress applications

On Urban road networks, road agencies need to quickly identify road pavement distresses in order toidentify appropriate maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. This is integral as agencies are plagued withfinancial and time constraint issues. There have been several attempts over the last few years to identifynew solutions and techniques to solve these issues. Several of these have shown merit and accuracy inidentifying distresses. However, the techniques in many instances are not correlated to available distressidentification standards. One of the considered techniques is the use of Structure-from-Motion, which triesto recreate 3D distress models for identification and analysis. This paper considers this methodology andattempts to integrate it with measurement requirements used by distress manuals to illustrate how thetechnique can be used with real-world industry standards and practices. Case studies of differentmeasurement types, on an urban road in Palermo, Italy, are considered. The results from these examplesshow that the technique replicates pavement distresses of varying measurement requirements and the paperpresents a workflow of how it can be utilized to help optimize the pavement management system and theirconnections to different distress identification manuals worldwide.