Road Surface Assessment of Pothole Severity by Close Range Digital Photogrammetry Method

Roads, in particular bitumen pavements are essential as major transportation and communication ways in modern civilizations. Nevertheless due to weather impacts and also loads from vehicles, surface of these roads often faces serious deterioration or distress from time to time. Rehabilitation and road maintenance work is not only time-consuming, but it also creates traffic disturbances and is also very costly. Problems such as lacking of data reading consistency and time-consuming have made the current visual inspection method to be less competent. Therefore, an effective road surface assessment method is proposed in this study to assess the severity level of pothole formation based on national guidelines, published by the Public Works Department. Ten random pothole samples were chosen randomly and their severity levels were assessed through both the conventional visual approach and the photogrammetric method. The study reveals that digital close range photogrammetry method can be used as the alternative way in visual assessment of pothole severity using typical d I gital camera, thus making the visual inspection easier, safer and more systematic. The proposed method has shown accuracy of 100% regardless of the types of digital camera used.