Major new update makes iROADS™ even more street-smart

TRL Software’s iROADS™ platform is a sophisticated asset management and decision-making tool for road infrastructure assets, helping to keep road networks safe, efficient and reliable. And, thanks to a major new update, it now has even more tricks up its sleeve.

“I think our customers are going to like what they see in the latest update – both in terms of all the new product capabilities and also the improvements in the user experience,” says John Proust, TRL Software’s Product Owner for iROADS™. “We have more than a hundred people from across TRL working on iROADS™ right now, and that huge spread of expertise is really showing through in the product.”

The latest update has been designed to work at even greater scale than previous iterations, allowing for more users, larger data volumes and faster performance. It also boasts greater connectivity than earlier versions, with the new iROADS™ capable of real-time sensor data integration, for example from live camera feeds or AI-generated object detection data.

 

Another major improvement is that iROADS™ now supports full integration of just about any ‘spatial data’ that customers want to use within the system.

“We’re essentially talking about any kind of data that can be mapped to a real-world location,” John explains. “It could be that a roads authority wants to bring in locations of schools or hospitals or petrol stations to prioritise maintenance on routes to those locations, or bring in flood risk zone maps to understand which parts of their road network are at risk.

“The new iROADS™ supports all major spatial file formats and is designed so that users don’t need any particular expertise in using spatial data. This means that our customers now have huge flexibility to bring in new datasets to use alongside all the other asset data that iROADS™ is already handling for them.”

And it’s not just TRL’s customers who will see the difference. A new Survey Route Builder, for example, allows iROADS™ users to plot road maintenance and monitoring routes that can be shared with asset surveyors (whether in-house or contracted), making their time out on the road more efficient. Members of the public can also get involved by using the iROADS™ Public Mobile App – giving regular road users the ability to report road infrastructure issues as soon as they arise.

National Highways have selected iROADS™ to replace their highly complex HAPMS pavement management system. The entirety of the English Strategic Route Network – representing some £80bn of UK infrastructure – will be managed using iROADS™.

TRL’s Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) has meanwhile been using the integrated intelligent camera feeds and object-detection data within iROADS™ to leverage new capabilities related to real-time sensor and asset data usage. In India, the State of Kerala’s Public Works Department has been using the iROADS™ Public Mobile App to empower members of the public to report road infrastructure issues along the 33,593-kilometre network maintained by the department. The app has been downloaded by 50,000+ road users and has already led to a twofold increase in the number of issues reported and an 83% reduction in wait time for the issues to be resolved.

“Data is already a huge driver of effective management of transport infrastructure, and will only become more so as new digital frontiers open up,” says John. “iROADS™ is all about generating maximum value from such data for our customers, and enabling them to benefit directly from new technologies.

“Because of the way iROADS™ allows users to visualise, combine and analyse data, I am confident we’re going to see new usages and benefits in the near future that go beyond what has been possible until now.”

As well as the new features that have been added in the latest update, iROADS™ also boasts improvements in terms of user experience, including improved mapping display responsiveness, a more streamlined interface and simpler integration with external systems through Open APIs (Application Programme Interfaces).

New Data Staging and Change Tracking features also give administrators much greater control over data coming into the system, and provide a full audit trail.

“The latest version of iROADS™ represents a major investment on the part of TRL Software that provides our customers with a totally new approach to asset management,” says Head of Product Management, Subu Kamal.

“We’ve looked at the challenges that our customers are facing around high costs and dated technologies that do not scale, and we’ve come up with a digital solution that is simpler, fully scalable and truly global – meeting the needs of our different customer segments from the US to the UK and from India to Australia.”

To find out more about the latest version of iROADS™ and how it can be used to help your organisation, please contact software@trl.co.uk