OREANDA-NEWS. Fujitsu announced the immediate availability in Japan of the FUJITSU Intelligent Society Solution Roadway Patrol Support Service, a new cloud-based service that employs smartphones(1) to assist in roadway inspection and patrol.

The new service, which is intended for local governments and other customers involved in road management, makes it possible to automatically collect information on roadway conditions using the built-in accelerometer of a smartphone placed in a moving vehicle. Combining this information with map data, users can easily perform a diagnosis of paving conditions on roads. Moreover, when an obstacle, road damage or other irregularity on a road is discovered while driving, operators can photograph the irregularity and log it into the system together with comments. This facilitates easy creation of reports.

Using the new service, customers can efficiently monitor road conditions and easily pinpoint areas that require maintenance. This helps to reduce operating costs for local governments and contributes to safe road maintenance.

In governments ranging from local municipalities to prefectures, properly maintaining roads, bridges and other public infrastructure not only enhances convenience for residents, but is also vital from the standpoint of disaster prevention in enabling residents to live in safety and with peace of mind. As funding for public works projects is limited, developing efficient and effective methods for maintaining public infrastructure is becoming ever more vital.

As of several years ago, Fujitsu has pursued efforts to develop systems that leverage ICT to inexpensively perform quantitative measurement of the deterioration of public infrastructure, without adding to the workload of roadside maintenance teams.