An Indo-Australian joint venture is undertaking survey of 9,000 km of roads across Telangana to assess their quality and help in improvements.
On the job is HawkEye, a vehicle fitted with advanced equipment to mine for data related to the road it takes. “We got the government contract three months ago,” says G. Parasuraman, managing director of Indian Road Survey and Management Pvt Ltd, a joint venture of Australian Road Research Board based out of Melbourne and Chennai’s Taisei International.
The Hawkeye 2000 Professional Network Survey Vehicle, from Australia, is an alternative to manual assessments and equipped with digital cameras, GPS, front laser-mounted beam and sub-projection lasers. The high speed data collection equipment would primarily be surveying 9,000 km covering State and national highways, besides major district roads before and after their improvements.
Telangana is the first State where work on this scale is being undertaken in the country, Mr. Parasuraman said, adding the concept is new but picking up fast. The work helps in generating comprehensive data pertaining to road quality, functional road parameters and the facilities. Though it was initially tough for the JV company, formed in 2009, to convince those concerned about the need for such work, things were changing with growing emphasis on quality control and safety aspects.
General Manager Abhishek Tiwari added that one of the driving forces for the change is the World Bank introducing the technology to projects it funded in the country.
IRSM recently inaugurated its 200-seater data analysis centre in Hyderabad, a facility where information on roads from various parts of the world is processed. The headcount of the centre will double to 200 by the end of this fiscal, he added.
