A Systematic Review of Existing Methods plus the State-of-the-art Technologies Used to Collect Road-Related Data and its Usage

Road networks are an essential component of infrastructure. In order to improve the performance of road networks, the existing (business as usual) data collection methods are critical for management staff. However, with the development of big data and technologies, advanced devices and analysis methods appeared in research area and industries. These technologies are more cost-efficient and intelligent to collect and analyze data. Therefore, there is a need to review the existing data collection methods and explore the state-of-the-art technologies regarding data gathering to figure out how best they can be used. This systematic review has been conducted to identify the technologies and data usage by answering two primary questions: 1) What is the evidence to support the use of existing data collection methods for the road sector? 2) What is the evidence to support the state-of-the-art technologies being used for road-related data collection and analysis? There is sufficient evidence to describe the existing data collection methods. Based on these methods, different devices and novel analysis methods are presented by researchers used for accurate and comprehensive data collection, which involves traffic management, road maintenance and road safety. However, the review discusses the limitation of each independent technologies and the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration, which requires more expert knowledge to achieve high quality implementation.

Keywords: Road data collection; State-of-the-art technologies; Traffic; Road maintenance; Road safety