COUNTRY | United Arab Emirates
REGION | Asia
SECTOR | transport
QII Principles | Principle1 Sustainable Growth & Development, Principle 2 Economic Efficiency, Principle 3 Environmental Considerations, Principle 4 Building Resilience, Principle 6 Infrastructure Governance
QII Sub-Principles | 1: SDGs, 1: Wider economic benefits, 2: Life-cycle costing, 2: Operation and maintenance, 2: Technological innovation, 2: Risk management, 4: Resilience, 4: Disaster risk management, 4: Disaster risk insurance, 5: Social Impact Assessment, 5: Job creation, 5: Capacity and institutional building, 6: Access to information and data
Overview
Cost: Installation 3.6M AED (including all sensors described) and 1.0M of maintenance per year
Size: 800KM central carriageway of Highways with 27 vehicle counting stations and 5 weighs in motion, 1 set of sensors for monitoring physical effects, 1 set of sensors to monitor chemical effects in concrete bridges, and 1 set of sensors to monitor road flooding conditions
Parties involved (public and private): UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure
Relevant contractual details (type, length etc.): Consultancy (RAMS contract for 8 years)
Context: The UAE’s Federal roads network contains a diverse variety and large quantity of assets. Based on this, the MoEI has detected the need of a comprehensive system to manage and operate the maintenance activities with the highest efficiency. As a result, the MoEI has developed its own assets management customized system by obtaining, collecting and processing the related data of roads elements, intending to enlarge their life span and keep the level of service of some parameters within the suitable range.
The level of service for those established parameters are related to the sustainability aspects from which the MoEI is responsible for.
Aim(s) of the project: These systems are used to collect historical information contained in the database as a self-learning tool to enhance any analysis. A good quality database will provide good quality results through the modification and enhancement of the algorithms behind the calculations.
While improving the process of increasing the database in its size and maintaining its quality and reliability, it can be ensured that the self- learning process will also be improved.
The technologies that MoEI has recently implemented within the assets management system are mentioned below as well as the reason why they were chosen.
The project means to monitor traffic conditions (number and type of vehicles, speed, weight and number of axles), deflections, tilting, vertical and horizontal displacements, temperature, chlorides content, pH and sulphates content and deflections. All this information is assigned to a specific location in the road.
Timeline
Key dates including procurement, construction, operations:
Project started in January 2017 and finishing on January 2021
Relevance to QII
Since the remote sensors are diverse they tackle different elements which MoEI needs to control.
The sensors provide information to improve and enhance procedures and works that per se, are related to technology innovation and artificial intelligence:
- Assets management and life cycle cost analysis (modification of condition indexes of the assets to manage and maintain in better way and consider information for the economic analysis)
- Risks and disasters management (monitoring the current condition of any infrastructure helps to take drastic decision if needed in case users’ safety is committed)
- Prepare better the infrastructure properties in order to resist better the negative effects induced by some events
Benefits
Expected and realised benefits: The information collected by the sensors which can be read instantly is able to integrate the information in different parameters to compare trends and provide indexes that can: modify the assets condition index, consider useful information for rehabilitation projects, deliver incidents to be considered by other authorities.
The information of the condition of the assets is fundamental not only to calculate and adjust their value but also to deal with other matters such as safety or operation.
Metrics
The project success is measured by two main aspects: acquisition of useful information within the sequence of time predetermined by MoEI and the use of that information at the technical job level
Name of Institution
Ministry of Finance, UAE