IoT Sensor Network Tested to Manage Rural Roads

Testing an IoT sensor network for rural road management
A consortium of research partners is working to create an IoT sensor network on 6,000 miles of remote roads in Scotland using this digital map to plan for continuity and identify hazards.

The government-backed project aims to reduce the cost and time pressure associated with manual roadside inspections and offers real-time monitoring of road conditions, including temperature and humidity levels. .

So far, IoT sensors have been deployed at test sites in two cities.

Sensor startup DigiFlec – which deploys Lidar 3D sensors from Velodyne – is collaborating on the project with Scottish innovation center Censis and Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) on the digital map.

“Local authorities and landowners are now struggling with a lack of information about the condition of their roads,” said Steven Gillan, chief executive of DigiFlec. “This is largely due to the time and cost of data collection. This makes it difficult to make good decisions about where to focus efforts and maximize time, materials and resources.

The project comes as part of the Scottish Government’s CivTech 6 accelerator programme, a plan to create an interface to manage the digital transport network. The program received $7 million from the government at the start of the year for initiatives to improve services in the public sector. Digital tools such as IoT imaging and sensing are becoming commonplace in these projects.