Positioning and detection of rigid pavement cracks using GNSS data and image processing

Modern pavement management systems depend mainly on pavement condition assessment to plan rehabilitation strategies. Manual inspection is performed by trained inspectors to assess pavement damages conventionally. This can be cost-intensive, time-consuming, and a source of risk for inspectors. An image-based inspection using a smartphone is adopted to overcome such problems. This paper proposes an automatic crack detection and mapping program for rigid pavement, which can automate the visual inspection process. The program uses Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data recorded by smartphones and various image processing techniques to detect crack lengths and areas in images. The performance of the program was evaluated by a field study. A crack quantification process was performed to compare the manually measured values and crack lengths obtained from the program. The results show that the program can detect other types of distress, such as pop-outs and punch-outs. This method can achieve satisfactory performance compared to the effort and costs spent.