Industry- and Academic-Based Trends in Pavement Roughness Inspection Technologies over the Past Five Decades: A Critical Review

Abstract

Roughness is widely used as a primary measure of pavement condition. It is also the key indicator of the riding quality and serviceability of roads. The high demand for roughness data has bolstered the evolution of roughness measurement techniques. This study systematically investigated the various trends in pavement roughness measurement techniques within the industry and research community in the past five decades. In this study, the Scopus and TRID databases were utilized. In industry, it was revealed that laser inertial profilers prevailed over response-type methods that were popular until the 1990s. Three-dimensional triangulation is increasingly used in the automated systems developed and used by major vendors in the USA, Canada, and Australia. Among the research community, a boom of research focusing on roughness measurement has been evident in the past few years. The increasing interest in exploring new measurement methods has been fueled by crowdsourcing, the effort to develop cheaper techniques, and the growing demand for collecting roughness data by new industries. The use of crowdsourcing tools, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is expected to receive increasing attention from the research community. However, the use of 3D systems is likely to continue gaining momentum in the industry.