What about using data to get ahead of the problem, so rather than fixing potholes, using data on traffic patterns, groundwater, vehicle use & type and no doubt a bunch of other stuff I’m not thinking of to know when a patch of road is likely to start getting potholes and then re-lay the bitumen of that section before the holes start to f…
What about using data to get ahead of the problem, so rather than fixing potholes, using data on traffic patterns, groundwater, vehicle use & type and no doubt a bunch of other stuff I’m not thinking of to know when a patch of road is likely to start getting potholes and then re-lay the bitumen of that section before the holes start to form but no so early you’re wasting resources and you get actual smooth roads not the rutted road feel you get when a road has heaps of small pothole repairs
Maybe this is an issue that AI would be able to deal with, but I can imagine that the scale of the road network and the amount of data that would need to be collected for each section of the road (this second bit is more significant I can imagine) that it would not be feasible to scale it like that
I think James is gesturing towards this idea - the data collected from the automatic pothole cameras could be used to train predictive models of road decay.
You'd probably need those automated traffic counters they have already. Remember, the Fourth Power Rule applies - the (axle) weight of traffic is the crucial factor. Taxing vehicles on that could fund the entire system (using the 4th power rule).
What about using data to get ahead of the problem, so rather than fixing potholes, using data on traffic patterns, groundwater, vehicle use & type and no doubt a bunch of other stuff I’m not thinking of to know when a patch of road is likely to start getting potholes and then re-lay the bitumen of that section before the holes start to form but no so early you’re wasting resources and you get actual smooth roads not the rutted road feel you get when a road has heaps of small pothole repairs
Maybe this is an issue that AI would be able to deal with, but I can imagine that the scale of the road network and the amount of data that would need to be collected for each section of the road (this second bit is more significant I can imagine) that it would not be feasible to scale it like that
I think James is gesturing towards this idea - the data collected from the automatic pothole cameras could be used to train predictive models of road decay.
You'd probably need those automated traffic counters they have already. Remember, the Fourth Power Rule applies - the (axle) weight of traffic is the crucial factor. Taxing vehicles on that could fund the entire system (using the 4th power rule).