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Abstract: Two principal aspects of preliminary highway design are detailed characterization of the geographic and topographic features
along potential candidate alignments and preliminary design of the highway along at least one of these candidates. The digital elevation model
(DEM) of the existing terrain is essential for these tasks. However, generating a DEM requires excessive time and effort. This research paper
proposes a quick and practical technique to extract geographic and topographic data from freely available online resources to generate a DEM
for purposes of preliminary highway geometric design. A primary step in construction of the DEM was to quantify relationships between
actual distance on the ground, computer screen resolution and size, and scale of the virtual earth, and then use these relationships to extract the
data automatically. The area displaying position and elevation data were positioned and subsequently saved as images. Image recognition
techniques were then used to interpret the position and elevation data. Data storage management was subsequently conducted to minimize the
error generated due to decimal place omission. In doing so, the accuracy of the extracted geographic data were enhanced to meet the require-
ments for preliminary geometric design. The DEMs were then constructed using the extracted geographic data. To demonstrate the efficacy of
the developed method and to verify its accuracy, the paper used data from a mountainous region located in the Sichuan Province of China.
The results showed that the proposed method is practical and that the constructed DEM is reliable and reasonable. Further, compared with
traditional methods, the proposed DEM construction method is less time-consuming and laborious, and more functionally consistent with
available online resources. DOI: 10.1061/JTEPBS.0000212. © 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Introduction helps to store, analyze, and visualize such data over large areas
(Moloney et al. 2017; Liao et al. 2018). The advantage of in-house
The successive phases of transportation asset development are plan- design is that the designers tend to be intimately familiar with the
ning, design, construction, operations (including maintenance and natural and anthropogenic features of the terrain and any local con-
monitoring), and end of life (Sinha et al. 2017). As responsible stew- straints, and this knowledge helps to yield designs that are effective
ards of the taxpayer-funded public infrastructure, highway agencies and safe (INDOT 2013).
are accountable to allocate available budgets that achieve maximized In the current era, however, there are more and more cases where
economic returns (Li et al. 2013). This requires highway agencies to infrastructure is planned and designed by entities external to the
carefully evaluate, at each phase, alternatives for designing, con- highway agency; this trend is facilitated by globalization, where
structing, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure, and to select projects are designed, planned, and financed by international firms.
the most cost-effective option. At the planning and design phases, the Therefore, it may be the case that most current geometric design
highway agency considers multiple alternatives in terms of location, practitioners are unaccustomed with certain features of the physical
alignment, material types, and orientations and dimensions of design environment of the proposed infrastructure (e.g., surface natural
elements. Traditionally, planning and design are carried out in-house and man-made features, local ecology). This knowledge is critical
by the highway administrative district where the proposed highway to the effective long-term performance of transportation assets
is to be located or by consultants hired by the highway department. (Simpson and Harris 2017). A design that fails to adequately ac-
Transportation infrastructure planning and design are mostly carried
commodate these features generally impairs the long-term resil-
out using geographic information systems (GIS), the traditional plat-
ience of the infrastructure and its sustainable development (Sinha
form for two-dimensional (2D) mapping of spatial data that also
and Labi 2007).
1 AASHTO (2011) recommends that horizontal and vertical
Ph.D. Candidate, Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Purdue Univ.,
550 Stadium Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47906. Email: chen1670@
alignments be coordinated during the preliminary design stage. At
purdue.edu this stage, a critical step is to identify geological and geographic
2
Ph.D. Candidate, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., features of the terrain along the alignment in question, and to quan-
2 Sipailou, Nanjing 210096, China. Email: zxtang@seu.edu.cn tify the performance (benefits and costs) of alternative alignments
3
Graduate, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., 2 Sipailou, because such performance is strongly related to the existing surface
Nanjing 210096, China. Email: yhzhou@seu.edu.cn features. The conventional practice is to carry out preliminary geo-
4
Professor, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., 2 Sipailou, metric design using digital elevation models (DEMs) on a scale
Nanjing 210096, China (corresponding author). Email: jccheng@seu of 1:50,000 (MOT 2007). Thus, this process does not require geo-
.edu.cn
Note. This manuscript was submitted on February 28, 2018; approved
graphic data of very high precision.
on August 8, 2018; published online on January 17, 2019. Discussion per- At each phase of highway development, engineers are mobiliz-
iod open until June 17, 2019; separate discussions must be submitted ing advanced technologies to facilitate their tasks. In the construc-
for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Transportation tion phase, advanced scheduling techniques are being adopted
Engineering, Part A: Systems, © ASCE, ISSN 2473-2907. (Sinha and Labi 2007); in the monitoring phase, robotic sensors
and other purposes. In its latest version (7.1 as of July 16, 2017), face characterization tools originate from the DEM constructed by
GE lacks the functionality—the application programming interfa- NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM 2016). Since
ces (APIs)—that facilitate interaction between geographic data and 2003, worldwide topographical data with 90-m (295-ft) accuracy
user (Google Developers 2014). This greatly impairs the applica- have been available to the public. Topographical data in the United
tion of GE in the acquisition of data vital for DEM development. States have been as precise as 30 m (98 ft) since NASA updated its
To address this issue, this paper proposes a no-cost and practical global data to that level of accuracy in 2014 (NASA 2017). Since
method to extract geographic data from such an online resource then, the data have been made available to the public, and there has
to generate DEMs for preliminary geometric design. The paper’s been a significant amount of research and practice (applications)
method also facilitates the extraction of surface features, making worldwide to validate and verify the accuracy of data available
the generated DEM comparable with the digital surface model in land surface characterization databases and tools including GE.
(DSM), thus fostering efficient and effective design of the highway Benker et al. (2011) found that topographical data in GE for the Big
alignment. Bend region in Texas have an accuracy of 2.64 m RMS error
(RMSE) horizontal and 1.63 m RMSE vertical. The RMSE of data
for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is 2.18 m for horizontal and 1.51 m for
Literature Review height, respectively (Farah 2014). Positional accuracy of horizontal
data is assessed to be approximately 0.1–2.7 m separately to the
Data on three-dimensional (3D) characterization of terrain is criti- north and south of Montreal, Canada (Goudarzi and Landry
cal for effective geometric design (Makanae and Dawood 2009) 2017). The authors also provided two methods to correct observed
and optimization (Jha and Schonfeld 2004) of highway alignments. positional errors and specifically to reduce or even eliminate them.
Traditionally, highway designers have obtained this data through However, control points are required for both error reduction
field surveying using geomatic instruments such as electronic to- methods.
tal stations. However, these data acquisition methods are time- Summing up, for the past few years, GE has become more
consuming and costly in terms of resource use (Jha and Schonfeld broadly applied in transportation engineering for its superior reli-
2004; Findley et al. 2013). To overcome these limitations, several ability and practicality. Digital land surface characterization tools
alternative methods have been developed over the last decades to are useful for an array of practical applications in transportation.
facilitate characterization of terrain surfaces, including global po- For example, it has been determined that the topographical data in
sitioning systems, remote sensing systems, and laser imaging (Wolf GE have an accuracy of around 30 m worldwide (Google Developers
2002) among others. Of these emerging techniques, GE shows 2017). However, the literature shows that actual accuracy (aerial/
remarkable advantages. satellite imagery and topography) is much more precise—as high
Land surface characterization tools such as GE have continued as about 5 m depending on region and terrain (Benker et al. 2011;
to improve the way users interact with the digital world (Butler Wang et al. 2017), which is sufficient for preliminary geometric de-
2006). Using such tools, designers can carry out, quickly and in- sign of highways (MOT 2007). The topographical data available in
teractively, versatile design functions in a manner that was once land surface characterization tools such as GE can be extracted at no
thought to be impossible. These functions include the estimation cost to the user. Therefore, the extraction of GE data for generating
of building heights (Qi et al. 2016) and highway bridge vertical DEMs for highway preliminary geometric design can be considered
clearance, agricultural land uses (Taylor and Lovell 2012), and for highway design applications.
identification of spatial land characteristics after disasters
(Nourbakhsh et al. 2006). In the transportation domain, GE has
been found to be an exceedingly effective and applicable tool for Methodology
highway asset inventory, asset characterization and management
(Darter et al. 2007; Xiong et al. 2015), crash site location and char-
Traditional Data Extraction Technologies and Their
acterization (Haleem and Abdel-Aty 2010; Wang et al. 2018), and
Limitations
future autonomous vehicle operations (Gargoum et al. 2017). These
achievements have been mostly based on high-resolution aerial and As discussed earlier, GE currently does not provide API inter-
satellite images provide by GE. faces to connect users and data. In this respect, the API provided
In addition, GE high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery can by Google Maps can serve as an alternative for users seeking to
be used to evaluate roadway safety performance by measuring build a digital characterization of terrain. However, the Google
existing roadway features, including sight distance (Easa et al. Map API key is limited to extraction of only 2,500 points of geo-
2017; Wang et al. 2017), curvature (Geedipally and Pratt 2017; graphical data daily; with an accuracy of 5 m, 2,500 points corre-
Tang et al. 2018), clearances (Xu et al. 2014), median width sponds to 0.0625 km2 (250 × 250 m). Therefore, for a highway of
(Fitzpatrick et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2014; Chen et al. 2017b), 100 km in length and 30 m in width, a 3-km2 surface area will be
deflection angle (Geedipally and Pratt 2017), number of lanes required for construction. Because the total potential area to locate
a
Approximate, based on surveying one point with an area of 25 m2 ; Darter, M., T. Lasky, and B. Ravani. 2007. “Transportation asset manage-
generally, time consumption is greatly influenced by terrain. ment and visualization using semantic models and Google Earth.”
b
Based on a group of practitioners to survey by total station. Transp. Res. Rec. 2024: 27–34. https://doi.org/10.3141/2024-04.
Easa, S. M., X. Qu, and E. Dabbour. 2017. “Improved pedestrian sight-
distance needs at railroad-highway grade crossings.” J. Transp. Eng.
Regarding traditional surveying methods, four professionals Part A: Syst. 143 (7): 04017027. https://doi.org/10.1061/JTEPBS
.0000047.
from universities and eight professionals from design institutions
Farah, A., and D. Algarni. 2014. “Positional accuracy assessment of
provided independent input. This was done to obtain 3D terrain
Google Earth in Riyadh.” Artif. Satellites 49 (2): 101–106. https://doi
data with an accuracy of 5 m. A comparison of traditional survey- .org/10.2478/arsa-2014-0008.
ing and the proposed method was carried out and is provided in Findley, D. J., J. E. Hummer, W. Rasdorf, and B. T. Laton. 2013. “Collect-
Table 3. ing horizontal curve data: Mobile asset vehicles and other techniques.”
J. Infrastruct. Syst. 19 (1): 74–84. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)IS
.1943-555X.0000107.
Conclusions Fitzpatrick, K., K. Dixon, and R. Avelar. 2016. “Evaluating operational
implications of reduced lane and shoulder widths on freeways.”
Digital tools for land surface characterization have been applied in J. Transp. Eng. 142 (11): 04016052. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)TE
transportation management. In highway preliminary design, for ex- .1943-5436.0000884.
ample, DEMs on scale of 1:50,000 are conventionally used. From Gargoum, S., K. El-Basyouny, J. Sabbagh, and K. Froese. 2017.
the literature review conducted, it was determined that tools such as “Automated highway sign extraction using Lidar data.” Transp. Res.
GE meet this accuracy requirement but do not exceed it. Therefore, Rec. 2643: 1–8. https://doi.org/10/3141/2643-01.
Geedipally, S. R., and M. P. Pratt. 2017. “Predicting the distribution of
a method was proposed to extract more accurate geographic data
vehicle travel paths along horizontal curves.” J. Transp. Eng. Part
from GE to generate a DEM for preliminary geometric design. The A: Syst. 143 (7): 04017021. https://doi.org/10.1061/JTEPBS.0000049.
proposed method is less time-consuming and less laborious than Gong, L., and W. Fan. 2017. “Applying travel-time reliability measures in
traditional methods. identifying and ranking recurrent freeway bottlenecks at the network
Current land surface characterization tools lack not only inter- level.” J. Transp. Eng. Part A: Syst. 143 (8): 04017042. https://doi
faces to directly extract geographic data but also features to trans- .org/10.1061/JTEPBS.0000072.
late screen pointer position into coordinates. In this paper, a new Google Developers. 2014. “Google Earth.” Accessed May 18, 2017. https://
technique to automatically control the screen pointer and to man- developers.google.com/earth/.
ually extract 3D topographical data was developed. Then a DEM Google Developers. 2017. “Google Earth Engine.” Accessed May 18,
based on the extracted data was constructed. Using a case study, 2017. https://earthengine.google.com/datasets/.
data were analyzed and results were presented showing that the Goudarzi, M. A., and R. J. Landry. 2017. “Assessing horizontal positional
constructed DEM with underlying satellite imagery provides a ba- accuracy of Google Earth imagery in the city of Montreal, Canada.”
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sis for preliminary design in the same way that topographical maps
.1330767.
developed from traditional field surveys do. Moreover, as satellite Haleem, K., and M. Abdel-Aty. 2010. “Examining traffic crash injury
images are updated regularly, the geographic and geomorphic fea- severity at unsignalized intersections.” J. Saf. Res. 41 (4): 347–357.
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rendered more up to-date than the DEM developed using traditional INDOT (Indiana Department of Transportation). 2013. Indiana design
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Jha, M. J., and P. Schofeld. 2004. “A highway alignment optimization
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