MITHOS partner Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) — Department of Intelligent Transport Systems — has published a new scientific paper on low-cost road roughness assessment, directly relevant to the project’s Vienna/Linz pilot site.
The study proposes a human-centric framework combining three complementary data sources: International Roughness Index (IRI) estimates from two independent smartphone applications, in-vehicle GNSS/IMU sensor measurements, and passenger Present Serviceability Ratings (PSR). The framework was validated over 1,700 km across Austria, Hungary, and Romania under real traffic conditions.
The results show that while the two smartphone applications correlate strongly with each other, a systematic bias limits their interchangeability. Vertical acceleration data, on the other hand, showed a consistent negative correlation with passenger-perceived ride quality — confirming that physical sensor measurements can meaningfully capture human perception of road roughness.
This work forms part of the Bundle of Fundamental Tools (BFT) feeding into MITHOS’s Decision Support System (DSS), and directly supports the project’s goal of developing cost-effective, scalable tools for multimodal transport infrastructure monitoring.
