Maintenance digitalisation enables effective winter maintenance
Destia’s maintenance contracts utilise state-of-the-art digital know-how. Over the past decades, there has been significant development in monitoring changing conditions in real time and in improving the framework for traffic.
At the beginning of the 1990s, when Destia’s Winter Maintenance Management Centre started operating in the Turku region, information about changes in the weather was seldom obtained, and it was not always known where, for example, the snow ploughs in use were moving, or who was taking care of salting the roads. Today, the location of the fleet is displayed on a real-time tracking device and available fleet can be directed to the right place. Improving technology enables the development of smarter operating models and the cost-effective use of available resources.
The roots of maintenance digitalisation at Destia date back to the 1990s, when the then National Board of Public Roads’ own trucks were equipped with reporting vehicle computers, which passed on their event data to Financial Management.
“These issues were already considered on a small scale then, and mobile reporting, for example, has been in use for some time. However, the world has also changed at Destia – the role of subcontracting has grown and mobile data is collected in a more diverse way. Some years ago, there was no knowledge of the machine solutions in use today”, says Oiva Huuskonen, Development Manager of Maintenance Services.
Digital maintenance solutions devised in the municipality of Ii
The digitalisation of maintenance has taken a huge leap, especially in the last five years. In 2016, Destia won the maintenance contract for the Ii area, one of the goals of which was to develop and utilise digital solutions. To support this goal, a plan was made and resources and budget were allocated for it from the project. During the contract, several new solutions have been introduced that streamline maintenance tasks and their management.
“This kind of contract is excellent for us. The development of digital solutions has been highlighted as a goal in itself, and the customer is also involved in the joint development team. The operating model allows for good tools that have made it possible to map needs from the customer’s perspective as well. It is possible and worthwhile to always improve service, and that is best done in cooperation with the customer”, Huuskonen emphasises.
Machine vision is essential for data utilisation
In smart production, data is collected comprehensively, transparently and in real time for different parties. Many new ways of collecting data are based on sensor data generated by smartphone software, which can be used to collect information about, for example, the movements of a vehicle and its environment. This way, for example, it is possible to identify the need to level a gravel road, snowy traffic signs and the condition of road surfaces in winter.
Analysed information is transmitted to the server, which provides an up-to-date overview of the maintainable road for both the project management and the customer. Systems operating via smartphones make it easy to crowdsource them to different groups of road users such as for distribution traffic or milk trucks, and collectively, this produces much more and better information than before.
Because there is an enormous amount of visual data that accumulates with the vehicles’ movements, it is important that the information is analysed and what is essential can be extracted from it. It is not necessary to do all the work manually, as the machine can identify the observations that require action.
The supervisors can also determine on which point of the road the material is to be checked. In such case the next vehicle with a camera that arrives on the spot will record and transmit full resolution data back to the ones needing the information. Machine vision makes sure that it is not possible to identify, for example, car registration numbers or people’s faces from the images.
“Machine vision is essential for the utilisation of data – tens of thousands of images can be received all over Finland every day. The system has significantly enabled facilitating people’s work and improved the quality of maintenance,” says Huuskonen.
The secret weapon for winter road maintenance, Destia’s Winter Maintenance Management Centre, also takes advantage of machine vision. Fintraffic’s road cameras and weather stations located on roads around Finland continuously forward information about weather conditions to maintenance contracts. Although local snowfalls may come as a surprise despite the forecasts, the machine vision weather camera developed by Destia is able to interpret the starting of snowfall and inform the management about it. This way, information travels quickly and traffic safety is improved.
The frequently updated status overview of the roads also helps the customer to understand the condition of the road to be maintained, and what kinds of measures are needed for its maintenance. Based on the visual data, artificial intelligence is able to produce various measurements of the conditions, in which case work supervision is also optimised in accordance with the need. From the visual data, it is possible to analyse, for example, the depth and width of a plowed snow wall and to identify a traffic sign covered in snow or dirt. If necessary, a notification of the observation will be sent to work supervision, which can further coordinate tasks to the units on the move according to their location and work situation.
In the future, road users will produce more information about the roads
“In the future, traffic will produce more and more information about the road, since there are constantly vehicles on the road equipped with cameras through which data can be collected. Not only will the development enable higher quality management planning and reporting, it will also reduce unnecessary driving and make for more efficient use of the time. It is becoming less and less necessary for the management to carry out separate inspection visits without an actual reason, so the development can also have a positive effect on the environment”, Huuskonen enthuses.
Although the project focusing on digital solutions will end for the Ii contract, both the current contract and the development of digital solutions will continue at Destia in the future. Unified and efficient project management is in the interests of both Destia and the customer, and company-specific solutions unlock huge potential for development.
“With digitalisation, many things can be taken care of without visiting the site. The development does not completely eliminate the need for roadside inspections, but they do not take up the same amount of time or resources as before. In this way, the achieved result is also improved, and resources can be concentrated more optimally. Our goal is to keep the roads safe for all road users, especially during the winter season, and in that, digital solutions help significantly”, Huuskonen continues.