Terrestrial laser scanner for the analysis of airport pavement geometry

The knowledge of the geometric features of an airport’s pavement surface is essential to ensuring the safety and comfort of the driving users. For this purpose, it is important to find the most suitable survey methods and computation procedures for determining these geometric features and their evolution over time. In this study, we used a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) to survey a stretch of a taxiway of an international airport. We designed the survey with the goal of defining the optimal parameters for the scans and the spacing between the TLS station points, combining high efficiency with data quality and accuracy. An algorithm for the semi-automatic extraction of the longitudinal and transversal profiles of the track from the digital elevation model (DEM) has been implemented. Longitudinal and cross slopes have been computed from the profiles using a linear fit, assessing the conformity of the values to the standards. The algorithm allows the verification of irregularities and the assessment of the severity of deviations from a linear trend. Our approach is suitable for obtaining an accurate reconstruction of the road surface that can be measured in post-processing and that is geo-referenced in a way that allows monitoring over time. We believe that the surveying technique that we analysed and assessed could improves the effectiveness of the measurements, and it could be used wherever pavement geometry control cannot be performed on discrete elements but rather a continuous approach is needed.