Remote Monitoring of motorway facilities

Demand-oriented cleaning and maintenance of motorway facilities like toilets represent an economical-logistical challenge for the operator and his cleaning service providers. Depending on the time of the day, week and year the facilities are extremely differently frequented, but should be in excellent condition whenever visited by the user. Both operators and cleaning service providers appreciate any information available through remote monitoring on user frequency and user behavior for guaranteeing an efficient cleaning adapted at intervals. A solution attractive in every respect for this is provided by a demand-driven, radio-based user counting system which in Austria has successfully been tested and introduced by ASFINAG (operating company of motorways). Measurement of customer frequency resolved in time and according to the three user groups – Ladies, Gentlemen, Urinal – is registered continuously using sensors and transferred by the IoT data radio system via mobile radio to a cloud portal especially established for this purpose for user-friendly representation and data evaluation: an IoT-based business model and at the same time DATAEAGLE application with a high benefit for all parties involved.

Permanently reliable and at the same time economic cleaning of toilet facilities requires high functionality and availability of the entire system, sensors, radio module and transmission technology up to the cloud and the portal. This must be guaranteed at all resting places of the motorway network, even in remote regions without internet availability. Data transmission shall be possible independent of any possibly available IT infrastructure and of course at lowest possible costs. Finally, destruction of facilities by vandalism (e.g. at exposed cable sections) shall be excluded as far as possible.