The two-year intelligent road monitoring project, which is now under way, will use data from Mercedes-Benz vehicles to increase knowledge in areas such as winter management, asset management and road safety. It will cover a road network of more than 130,000km in the Netherlands.
The aim is to produce actionable data. For example, said Dick Ottevanger, programme manager for smart mobility at the Rijkswaterstaat, part of the Min I&W, plans for improving or repairing roads were known for the year ahead, “but cars can actively deliver everyday information on the condition of a road. That’s a big difference.
“The question is, what can we do with this data? Can contractors handle all this information? Is it too much?”
The project is a pilot programme, said Ottevanger. In future, vehicles other than Mercedes-Benz models might be enrolled in the scheme and it could be applied to organisations such as the country’s provinces and municipalities.
“Winning this important reference project in Europe for intelligent road monitoring marks a major step for Mercedes-Benz in our clearly stated aim to ‘Lead in car software’, said Daniel Deparis, head of urban mobility solutions at Mercedes-Benz Group.
The use of the anonymised data from intelligent, connected vehicles in the company’s range “will be able to deliver action-guiding insights and thereby aid responsiveness and decision-making in critical infrastructure projects”. Potholes, icy roads and abrasion of road markings are among the road problems that could be reported by the vehicles.
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