A Pothole Warning System using Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs)

In developing countries, road surface quality monitoring, especially pothole detection, is performed manually by the concerned authorities. Such a traditional method of road surface assessment is expensive and requires a lot of time and human resources. The timely detection of potholes is critical, as they may lead to vehicle damage, road accidents, and injuries. To address this issue, this paper presents a pothole warning system based on algorithms using Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). The proposed solution uses an accelerometer to collect pothole-related data and warns drivers and authorities about potholes. We developed simulations and performed experiments to test and evaluate the global efficiency rate of the proposed method. The simulations show it can reduce pothole hits on highways by 73.65%. To allow for the replication of the experiments, the simulation code is being made publicly available.