Scalable Transportation Monitoring using the Smartphone Road Monitoring (SRoM) System

Our quest for ubiquitous Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is simply infeasible over proprietary systems. In a time of abundant smart devices, it is impractical to consider developing competing proprietary monitoring systems to collect information for ITS operation. We argue for utilizing smartphones to present a driver and road monitoring system capable of scaling to the number of drivers without incurring high implementation costs, thus allowing for safer driving conditions and shorter accident response times. We propose the Smartphone Road Monitoring (SRoM) system that is capable of sensing road artifacts such as potholes and slippery roads. The information is collected through crowdsourcing and processed by base stations, giving faster and more accurate responses compared to current systems, to address road safety related events in a timely manner. It is also capable of detecting aberrant driver behavior such as speeding and drifting. SRoM uses both the driver's smartphone and vehicle as sources of information, and allows pedestrians to share media pertaining to each event. The collected data is made available to the public through an interactive map updated with the authenticated events. We implemented a prototype of the system to perform the task of safety monitoring. System evaluation of the prototype shows that the system can be easily implemented in real-life using current technologies at little cost.