Road Maintenance

Road maintenance is an ongoing activity that involves repaving, pothole filling, and repainting. However seasonal issues on roads, such as wildlife casualties can interfere with normal traffic and impact road maintenance. The overlap between road maintenance and wildlife crossings is also challenged by the fact that these issues are often dealt with by two distinct municipal departments: (i) infrastructure/roads, and (ii) environment/wildlife.

Applications and Solutions: Wildlife Monitoring

Wildlife collisions are a serious problem that results in death and serious injuries to motorists, their passengers and animal casualties on municipal roadways. Statistics reveal 4 to 8 animal collisions occur every hour in Canada. Annually, wildlife collisions are estimated to range from 10,000 to over 15,000 annually in each province. Anticipating where crossings occur can alert motorists to slow down and proceed cautiously is made difficult because of the difficulties of tracking large mammals and detecting crossings. Posted signs on high-speed roads are not especially useful because they do not inform drivers when a heightened risk is present.

Smart city solutions are effective at automating monitoring, tracking, and sensing when animals are on road and can provide live updates that inform motorists when to slow down.

Technologies

Fencing – Roadside fencing is effective at preventing wildlife collisions by restricting their entry onto roadways, but this also confines animals to one side preventing essential mating, access to food sources, and migration patterns that can negatively impact animal populations. Studies revealed that this solution has allowed cougar populations to double and are used by a wide variety of species such as: bears, elk, deer, moose, foxes, marmots, toads, wolves, wolverines, lynx, snakes, beavers, coyotes, cougars, bighorn sheep and more.

Green overpass and underpasses – Creating animal crossings at strategic points on roadways can encourage safe passage for animals, reducing use of roads, which leads to less collisions and accompanying injuries and death. This can support animal crossings and enable research through camera installation, as was the case in Banff National Park. Both under and overpasses were important for different species and adaptation may take up to five years for bears and wolves

Break the beam sensors – Break-the-beam sensors detect large animals when their bodies block or interrupt a beam of infrared, laser, or microwave radio signals sent between a transmitter and receiver. They often miss small animals, however, and produce many false positives and negatives. They also require ongoing maintenance such as mowing, introduction of power sources, fence construction, and replacement costs due to weatherization, technical problems such as signal failure, obstruction issues, costs, vandalism, and threat, and are subject to vehicle collisions.

Digital road signs – These signs warn motorists of upcoming road traffic and safety conditions and can be programmed to provide live updates. Digital road signs can complement break the beam sensors to inform motorists when wildlife is crossing. They can also be used independently to warn motorists when heightened alert is warranted during peak crossing periods.

LiDAR cameras – LiDAR technologies scan a defined area using laser and detector pairs mounted in a compact housing unit. This can cover a 360-degree horizontal and 30-degree vertical field view allowing for advanced wildlife detection and tracking. Coupled with deer classifying algorithms which includes background filtering, LiDAR can detect a deer 30 metres away with a controlled time delay of 0.2 seconds.

Managing Liability Issues

Privacy

Issues.

⚠️ Consider the location of installing detection devices. Ensure that advanced sensor systems such as LiDAR are not located near private residences.

Managing issues.

✅ Modifying algorithms to distort human classifiers can reduce the likelihood that individuals will be inadvertently monitored.

✅ Collect data, don’t surveil. Wildlife monitoring should not in theory, infringe on privacy rights. However, technologies that are used in surveillance gathering should be carefully screened for privacy issues.

✅ Choose the technology appropriate to the task. Low-tech solutions such passive technologies may be preferable to high tech post-construction solutions that are less, more prone to weather and technical failures and more privacy invasive.

✅ Data-fuzzing. Employ data-fuzzing techniques to preserve privacy. For example, if technologies must be placed near private residences, ensure data is not collected from these locations.

✅ Ensure that partners or contractors follow collection restrictions. When purchasing data from private companies, ensure that they are upholding their own privacy obligations under relevant legislation.

✅ Follow good privacy practices.

Security

Issues.

⚠️ Roadside detection devices are subject to vandalization, theft, and destruction from automobile collisions.

Managing issues.

✅ Considering security and replacement costs of lost or damaged devices should be assessed as part of adoption.

✅ Follow good security practices.

Procurement

Issues.

⚠️ Costs of deploying wildlife crossing strategies should be considered from a lifecycle perspective.

Managing issues.

✅ Smart technologies may appear to eliminate a problem altogether but can have significant operational and maintenance costs associated with their implementation including structural requirements, damage from weather, technical failures, false-positive and false negative detection rates, and more.

✅ Follow sound procurement practices.

Operations

Issues.

⚠️ Effectiveness in terms of reducing vehicle-animal collisions should be considered before selecting a solution.

Managing issues.

✅ Pilot technologies prior to incentivizing or deploying it. Collect appropriate data on various solutions before adopting a municipal-wide strategy.