A Crowdsensing Solution for Tracking Bicycle Path Conditions

Abstract

The Flemish Agency for roads and traffic carries out bi-annual measurements to make an inventory of the physical conditions of bicycle paths. This is currently an expensive endeavor, performed by government employees using dedicated and expensive equipment. Moreover, these measurements are usually only performed once and are limited to larger bicycle paths. This results in partial (50% of bicycle paths being measured) and out-of-date measurements. This paper presents the design and development of a crowdsensing solution to measure bike paths conditions daily. An embedded device accompanied with a software platform allows us to update the inventory of the pathconditions more frequent, accurate and cost-friendly. Overhead for cyclists is minimized and security is taken into account as the devices are used in uncontrolled environments.

Belgian pre-normative research project SuChar-BiLan on surface monitoring of bicycle lanes

“…Other literature concentrates only on parts that are typically needed in a complete maintenance management system. Some propose the use of crowd sensing for maintenance management ( [46], [47]). Some propose artificial intelligence for image processing with the objective of creating an inventory [48] or even a condition assessment [49] of bike paths.…”