ARES – Assestment Road Equipment System

ARES – Assessment Road Equipment System, is an innovative system that allows for the analytical assessment and determination of the actual performance of restraint devices along road networks, through surveys with high-performance vehicles, artificial intelligence models, machine learning algorithms, and performance decay curves.

It provides essential support for managing bodies. It is an objective criterion that classifies the activities necessary for the technical control of road efficiency, based on their importance or urgency, and defines a priority index for interventions in the context of optimising available resources.

Through ARES and its specific WebApp, it is possible to equip oneself with a system for the integrated management of restraint systems capable of identifying real critical issues and assessing the priorities of interventions, based on the maintenance status of the device, the characteristics of the support and the surrounding conditions, ensuring the overall safety of the infrastructure and minimising resources and costs.

The objective of ARES is to determine a priority index for safety barrier adaptation measures, based on the intrinsic characteristics of the device, its state of maintenance, the characteristics of the support and the surrounding conditions, which characterise the Functioning Index.
For all devices whose Functionality Index is below a predefined acceptability value, adaptation measures must be planned in order to guarantee containment capacity.

Through the survey carried out with a High Performance vehicle, it is possible to define homogeneous sections and identify and register road restraint devices.

On-site testing allows for the mechanical characterisation of supports in order to determine the behaviour of safety devices.

The Functioning Index (FI), which assesses the containment capacity of the device, determines the need for maintenance work. If the Functioning Index falls below a predefined limit value, corrective measures must be taken.

The WebApp allows the operator to enter the adjustments necessary to make road restraint systems compliant and the relative cost of each adjustment. The cost index takes into account the fact that, for the same expenditure, it is preferable to intervene on longer, uniform sections of road, considering the greater probability that these may be involved in accidents.
Using a database containing the main adjustments and their unit prices, the operator can draw up a list of adjustments to be carried out within the WebApp, with the option of specifying the quantities for each adjustment; following this activity, the PI can be recalculated.