Project News

1.0 Background of DRIMS

During Phase 1 of The Project for Strengthening of Capacity on Road Maintenance Management through Contracting in the Republic of Kenya, supported by Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), Vehicle Intelligent Monitoring System (VIMS,) was introduced as a standard tool for evaluation of smoothness of road surface (IRI: International Roughness Index) to support road maintenance planning. VIMS was further developed and renamed to Dynamic Response Intelligent Monitoring System (DRIMS) and adopted by KeNHA in Phase 2 of the Project. KeNHA is using this equipment for the ARICS (Annual Road Inventory and Condition Survey) as a standard specified in ISO. Currently KeNHA owns 10 sets of DRIMS equipment while KWS owns 3 sets for their measurement of IRI.

With advancement in technology, scholars from University of Tokyo have developed a much simpler, inexpensive, easy to use system for road condition assessment, which is iDRIMS. The system can be implemented using a smartphone. The major advantage of this improvement is the change from a stand-alone system to a cloud-based server system which enables data analysis from a central system/point. User friendliness of the system is also an important advancement (e.g., update and troubleshooting).

One of the major outputs of this project phase is to ensure that DRIMS is widely used for road conditions assessment by road agencies in Kenya. The iDRIMS seminar and pilot implementation is joint activity between SIP (Cross – ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program initiated by Cabinet Office, Government of Japan) and JICA with cooperation of KeNHA .

The Seminar was held for the purpose of introduction of iDRIMS and implementation of pilot project inviting mostly KeNHA engineers.

2.0 Outline of the Seminar

Date: May 24-26, 2017 (3 days)

Venue: Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)

Theme: Lecture and Practical Training on iDRIMS Operation

Lecturers:
Dr. Tomonori NAGAYAMA: Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Associate professor
Dr. Masashi TOYODA: Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Associate professor

Participants: Engineers from Road Authorities: KeNHA: 55; KWS: 3, KeRRA: 1 and MTRD: 1.

Attendance: Approximately 190 Engineers (for the 3 days).

3.0 Difference between DRIMS and iDRIMS

	DRIMS	iDRIMS
1	MS Windows platform	Apple iOS platform
2	Laptop, GPS, Drive Recorder, DAC	iPod touch with external GPS or iPhone
3	Sensors and devices need to be connected by cables	The system uses internal sensors of smart phone, no cables
4	Data storage and management is done in a local system	Data stored and management in a central cloud server
5	Data integration and sharing requires collection of data from inspectors (manually)	Data is automatically integrated and is easily accessible by the users through server

DRIMS

iDRIMS

4.0 Way forward:

1. Continuous pilot project by KeNHA supported by JICA Team and SIP
2. Conduct further training and involve more Road Authorities Staff
3. Monitoring and verification of the suitability of the implementation as well as study on improvement of application and devices.