Automated Road Crack Localization for Spatially Guided Highway Maintenance

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework combining airborne imagery and OpenStreetMap data to localize highway cracks using YOLOv11, aiding targeted maintenance with a new Swiss RHCD index.

Contribution

It introduces a novel open-source data-driven approach for highway crack detection and a new index to guide nationwide maintenance efforts.

Findings

Crack classification achieved an F1-score of 0.84 for cracks.

The Swiss RHCD index showed weak correlation with temperature and traffic.

High RHCD values near urban areas validate the model's effectiveness.

Abstract

Highway networks are crucial for economic prosperity. Climate change-induced temperature fluctuations are exacerbating stress on road pavements, resulting in elevated maintenance costs. This underscores the need for targeted and efficient maintenance strategies. This study investigates the potential of open-source data to guide highway infrastructure maintenance. The proposed framework integrates airborne imagery and OpenStreetMap (OSM) to fine-tune YOLOv11 for highway crack localization. To demonstrate the framework's real-world applicability, a Swiss Relative Highway Crack Density (RHCD) index was calculated to inform nationwide highway maintenance. The crack classification model achieved an F1-score of $0.84$ for the positive class (crack) and $0.97$ for the negative class (no crack). The Swiss RHCD index exhibited weak correlations with Long-term Land Surface Temperature Amplitudes (LT-LST-A) (Pearson's $r\ = -0.05$) and Traffic Volume (TV) (Pearson's $r\ = 0.17$), underlining the added value of this novel index for guiding maintenance over other data. Significantly high RHCD values were observed near urban centers and intersections, providing contextual validation for the predictions. These findings highlight the value of open-source data sharing to drive innovation, ultimately enabling more efficient solutions in the public sector.