Using Yotta DCL's groundbreaking Nano  technology with a high-resolution 360-degree photographic survey,  Nottinghamshire is able to map its highway inventory pixel-by-pixel giving a  clear true picture of its assets. The additional benefits of Yotta DCL's unique  digital asset collection survey are speed, accuracy and lower costs.  
Nottinghamshire is a typical semi-rural authority with  approximately 4000km of highway. The majority of the roads are unclassified.  This mix of roads presents many challenges for asset collection. A total of  250km of A, B and C roads were surveyed as a trial with Yotta DCL's geospatial  video technique (Geovideo) that works in conjunction with the company's Nano  software.
The need for local authorities to know exactly what  their highway assets comprise, their location and their condition is being  driven by Central Government.  Bernard Younger, Service Head (Highway  Assets), Nottinghamshire County Council, says: “Asset management and valuation  is becoming an important focus for local authorities. However, asset collection  is usually an expensive exercise but Yotta DCL is offering a new way to do this  which is very interesting. We are very excited by this new surveying technique.  It is bringing asset collection and inventory management to a completely new  dimension.”

The Yotta DCL survey team uses a specially designed and  developed vehicle equipped with six automated cameras that provide a full  street-level view of the highway. The cameras take a photograph every 2 metres  as the vehicle drives along, with the precise position of each item recorded by  GPS. These photographs are processed by the Nano software. The data is then  evaluated and analysed pixel-by-pixel to give a highly accurate view of each  inventory item captured on the journey.

Traditional asset  collection surveys are performed by surveyors walking the highways and are  therefore dependant on each surveyors performance and experience. This is a slow  process averaging about 2km a day and can produce variable results. Moreover  manual surveys are time consuming and expensive to perform. An alternative is to  manually review the video footage taken while a survey vehicle drives along the  highway. This too is dependent on the person reviewing the video and can produce  variable results.

With its unique service, Yotta DCL has removed  the element of human inaccuracy, sped up the survey process by 100 times as a  whole and reduced the cost of asset collection. The added benefit of the  automated, digital technique is that the data can be input to the Pavement  Management System without further keying in of information.

“We are  very impressed with the results presented by Yotta DCL. We have reviewed the  data and would advocate this method of surveying. The additional benefit of  having this capture data is that we can return to it whenever we want. Yotta  DCL's team has broken new ground with this technology and we are extremely  pleased with the results of the trial,” concludes Bernard  Younger.