Auditing Road Maintenance Work Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Road maintenance works performed by contractors require validation upon completion. Conventional methods are typically chosen to validate the works. Geographic Information System (GIS) is applied in this study to produce accurate data such that waste from road maintenance costs can be minimised. In this study, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used to observe the images of two roads, namely Jalan Gelanggang and Jalan Temuan, both of which are under maintenance at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The objectives of this study are; to determine the ability of UAV technology in supervision and verification of maintenance works, and the effectiveness of spatial works in road maintenance. This study then proceeds with analysing data by using ArcGIS and AutoCAD software to determine the width, perimeter, and area of the road that has been maintained. Comparisons were made between these two data which are the data that has been claimed and provided by the contractors (as-built data) and images data of the UAV whenever to get the percentage of the difference for several features of the road. Results from this study showed that the value for width, perimeter, and area of the as-built data for both roads are greater than the value of the image where the UAV data show percentage differences of shape area for Jalan Gelanggang is 3.27% and for perimeter is 1.35%. While percentage differences of shape area are for Jalan Temuan is 4.83% and for perimeter is 2.44%. Therefore, if UAV is used for work validation, the total saving on road maintenance work costs are saved at least RM6,386.28 for Jalan Gelanggang and RM5,775.24 for Jalan Temuan.