Road quality is an essential factor for the social and economic development of any territory. Timely maintenance operations of the infrastructure are paramount and rely on up-to-date knowledge about road conditions. For years University of Urbino has been developing technologies that allow all drivers to contribute anonymously to the continuous collection of road quality data.

SmartRoadSense is a free mobile app that makes use of smartphone accelerometers to automatically detect road conditions, which contribute to an open road quality dataset and are shared through an online map. Through the European project CROWD4ROADS, Regione Marche, Regione Abruzzo, BlaBlaCar, Fundatia Satean (RO), Coventry University (UK), and Buckinghamshire Advantage (UK) have joined the efforts by University of Urbino.

RisorgiMarche is a festival that will be held in July 2018 in the Marche Region zones hit by the earthquake of 2016: musical and artistic events will give people the opportunity to get back to those heavily damaged areas, re-exploring their beauty and supporting the local population. CROWD4ROADS supports the RisorgiMarche initiative by pointing its online map to the locations of the event, pin-pointing upcoming events, and inviting all participants to use the SmartRoadSense mobile app and BlaBlaCar to reach the events. This will collect precious data on road conditions, thus allowing participants to further contribute to the recovery of the affected areas.

“We often speak about smart technologies, but to put smartness into a territory we need to rely on people and data”—says prof. Alessandro Bogliolo, coördinator of the project—“technology is but the instrument that allows it to share data and reach people. RisorgiMarche is a great opportunity to bring people back to extraordinary locations, which deserve to be known and lived, in the name of music and art. SmartRoadSense allows all participants to collect data that will be useful to take care of the territory and facilitate its renascence.”

In order to monitor the status of roads everywhere you simply need to install SmartRoadSense and remember to activate it as soon as you start driving. The application does not require further interactions and is compatible with any other use of the device (including phone calls and providing driving directions).