Odysseus

Many people spend an extraordinary amount of time in their cars---the
average car commute in Dublin is nearly forty minutes long [1].
Traffic volume has been growing universally at an rapid pace, putting
an increasing strain on our physical infrastructure and environment,
as well as our personal mental and physical well-being.

Consequently, the quality of our *roads* plays a major role in the
quality of our *lives*.  A smooth, clean, properly maintained road is
safer, easier to drive on, and supports a wider range of drivers and
vehicles.  Road conditions contribute to fatalities in 2.5% of all
fatal accidents in Ireland [2].  While roads continue to improve in
Ireland in recent years, between 1997 and 2006, 347 people died (and
over 1,500 people were seriously injured) in road collisions [3], and
353 people died on the roads in 2007 alone [4].

Unfortunately, most roads are in a poor state of repair.  Contributing
factors include surface failures like potholes, surface irregularities
in construction, faults due to environmental conditions like seasonal
heat and cold cycles, local failures such as road slip due to heavy
rain, and incidental damage caused by the use of salt to expedite
deicing.  All of these problems contribute to roads that are poorly
maintained, inefficient, and often downright dangerous.

Problems with roads are sometimes noted by those responsible for them,
but are sometimes reported by citizens.  But noticing or reporting a
problem, even one that is dangerous, does not guarantee that it will
be fixed soon, or at all.  Bureaucrats responsible for our roads must
prioritize their new work and maintenance work against their
available resources, including tight budgets, limited personnel, etc.

This project, Road-Wær, answers the question:

 How do we better inform the government as to the state of its
 primary transportation infrastructure and help them prioritize
 repair work?

The Road-Wær platform is based on a small device called the SenseTile
platform [5], a multi-model sensing device designed at UCD.  Its collects
and analyzes and collates, 24 hours a day, in real-time, the road
conditions under a vehicle, and the vehicle's behavior with respect to
those conditions.  Accelerometers measure when a car hits a bump or
dips into a pothole;, cameras see large cracks in the road, or
dangerous gravel on the road; and the driver tells the Road-Wær
device that he or she just passed a problematic patch of road with the
push or a button or by simply speaking out-loud.  All of this data is
correlated with the vehicles precise GPS location and it is
intermittently transmitted to a central data analysis server over the
Internet, perhaps when the car is parked in the garage.

The Road-Wær device comes in two flavors.  The larger model, the
Road-*Ware* device, is used in any vehicle from a motorcycle to a semi.
It installs in minutes, fits nearly anywhere in the vehicle,
(preferably out of the way, like under a seat or in the trunk), and
plugs into the cars electrical system (e.g., into a cigarette lighter,
if necessary).  Its smaller cousin, the Road-*Wear* device, is small
enough to fit in a backpack, jacket pocket, or on the handlebars of a
bicycle.  It runs off of batteries and is only meant to be used for
short trips before being recharged.

Having only a single Road-Wær device in operation in an area will
obviously not provide quality coverage, as many vehicles follow the
same route repeatedly, and some vehicles are used more than others.
Consequently, the Road-Wær system is meant to be deployed across a
fleet of vehicles (e.g., all police cars, city buses, garbage trucks,
etc.) so that full area coverage with excellent data accuracy is
straightforward.  Data is aggregating and analyzing from all of these
vehicles with the aim to increasing data quality through correlation
analysis.  Using these techniques we will determine the problems that
are the most problematic or dangerous to the highest number of
vehicles, highest number of citizens (e.g., a road that is regularly
dangerous for a bus full of children is more critical than a road that
is dangerous only to a small set of passenger vehicles), or specific
kinds of important vehicles (e.g., ambulances and public
transportation).

[1] http://www.payscale.com/research/IE/City=Dublin/Commute_Time
[2] http://www.irishtimes.net/newspaper/motors/2008/1126/1227486578452.html
[3] http://www.rsa.ie/
[4] http://www.rte.ie/news/features/roadsafety/introduction.html
[5] http://sensetile-trac.ucd.ie/