Cities have an extensive heritage of urban infrastructures that they must conserve, maintain and improve, applying sustainability principles and seeking to improve the residents’ quality of life in that population centre.
In particular, the road architecture that makes up cities is subdivided into roads for vehicular traffic and all pavements or surfaces dedicated to pedestrians. This section also includes all the elements on the city streets that regulate their use, such as pavement maintenance, urban lighting network or signage.
The problems and determining factors for keeping public roads in good condition are similar in large and small cities. They are a priority for the different authoritiess, as they are the backbone of our social life, commercial relations, etc. . In addition, historically, urban planning and, specifically, roads have been a determining factor in the evolution of cities, both for their social and economic growth.
In today’s society, sustainability and improving the quality of life of people living in cities is a priority, and this is reflected in the investment trends for road improvement, where the following axes can be highlighted:
- Recovery of spaces for pedestrians that were given over to road traffic in the past.
- Increase green spaces and integrate them into the roads.
- Apply techniques to the paving of sustainable urban drainage systems, which consist of surface, permeable, preferably vegetative elements that are part of the urban-hydrological-landscape structure and precede the sewerage system. They are designed to filter, retain, transport, accumulate, reuse and infiltrate rainwater into the ground, not to degrade or restore the water quality they manage.
- Reduce carbon footprint through the use of recycled materials and semi-warm asphalt mixes.
- Reduce consumption by improving the energy efficiency of lighting using LED technology and implementing remote management.
- Tactical urban planning includes reorganising spaces and circulation using only horizontal signage and vegetation tree surrounds. . Once the results are verified optimal, redevelopment works are carried out.
- Compatibility of uses and new modes of transport
- Apply new technologies to have real-time information on infrastructure assets and their degradation rate.
Conacon Sando, a company specialising in road improvement and maintenance works and services, manages the maintenance of pavements in cities such as Seville, Malaga, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, San Agustin de Guadalix and Bormujos. In these infrastructure maintenance contracts in Smart Cities it has opted for innovation and sustainability. In addition to these projects, there are specific energy efficiency projects for replacing luminaires with less polluting and sustainable ones that provide an alternative to public lighting.
Specifically, Conacon Sando implements the following actions:
- Recycling materials for earthworks and pavements, with adaptation of our material production plants to meet environmental targets.
- Management of the service through software developed by the company,specifically for managing incidents and maintenance of the road inventory, such as Genesis, which involves the following improvements:
- Reduction of response times
- Traceability of actions and investments
- Improving managing work teams.
- Integration of the council’s operating systems allows the derivation of actions previously approved by the contract management.
- Real-time approval of work orders by the Authorities
- Georeferenced information and GIS support.
In the field of R&D&i applied to pavement maintenance and, in short, to infrastructure maintenance in Smart Cities, we can highlight two of them:
- THE ROADS:Project that allows the combined collection of topographic data through scanner and GPS on tourism and UAV-Drones systems. The position and orientation of each image are recorded by assigning GPS coordinates obtained from the GPS receiver integrated into the capture system. The platform this tool is presented on is directly accessible via the Internet without specific software. Points, lines and surfaces are placed on each frame, and all elements can be measured and entered into databases.
- INSPECT-ROADS project:This project aims to carry out the detection of incidents on the road surface, which, in an automated and efficient way, can determine the type, position and seriousness of the problems detected to feed the management system of the conservation entity. This is done using an application based on advanced image processing and the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The use of specific technology, such as Matterport, is also noteworthy. That is the standard for capturing 3D spaces using 360-degree cameras to make 3D surveys and scanning the point cloud that shapes the environment.
