Automated Road Crack Localization for Spatially Guided Highway Maintenance

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Knoblauch, Steffen, Muthusamy, Ram Kumar, Ghamisi, Pedram, Zipf, Alexander
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Knoblauch, Steffen
Muthusamy, Ram Kumar
Ghamisi, Pedram
Zipf, Alexander
author_facet Knoblauch, Steffen
Muthusamy, Ram Kumar
Ghamisi, Pedram
Zipf, Alexander
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16737
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Automated Road Crack Localization for Spatially Guided Highway Maintenance
Knoblauch, Steffen
Muthusamy, Ram Kumar
Ghamisi, Pedram
Zipf, Alexander
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
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.
title Automated Road Crack Localization for Spatially Guided Highway Maintenance
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16737