2015 - Philippines - Estimating Road Roughness Conditions Using Ubiquitous Smartphones and Geographic Information Systems and its Application to Road Network Planning in the Philippines

The World Bank established the International Road Roughness Index (IRI) as a standard to measure road roughness. Although road inspection vehicles equipped with multiple sensors costing several millions of pesos can effortlessly measure IRI, developing countries find this steep price to be a challenge for evaluating and managing their road systems. This paper therefore aims to develop an alternative method to measure road roughness using ubiquitous smartphones and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The proposed methodology is based on data collected by smartphones which are processed using GIS and compared with existing IRI measurements to estimate road roughness measurements of different road types. The paper likewise explores the proposed methodology’s application and integration to road network planning in the Philippines.