A Crowd-sourcing Approach to Developing Visual Datasets for Safety Assets

Recent advances in data management and data-driven analytics offer substantial potential to improve transportation safety asset management by automating labor-intensive condition assessment and data interpretation tasks. However, despite the rapid growth of imagery and sensor data within UDOT, most existing datasets are not directly usable for data-driven applications because they lack standardized, high-quality condition labels. Existing annotation efforts are largely manual, inconsistent, and difficult to sustain at scale, limiting the development and deployment of reliable computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. This project addresses these limitations by developing a collaborative, web-based crowd-sourcing platform that enables UDOT personnel and approved stakeholders to efficiently annotate transportation safety asset imagery. The platform will incorporate standardized labeling workflows, quality assurance procedures, and automated metadata generation to create reusable, high-quality datasets that support both operational asset management and future AI applications. The resulting framework will establish a scalable process for transforming raw imagery into curated datasets suitable for inspection, maintenance prioritization, performance monitoring, and future research.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $49,918.47
• Contract Numbers:

  278357

  UT26.3A

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Utah Department of Transportation

  Research and Innovation Division
  Salt Lake City, UT  United States  84114
• Managing Organizations:

  Utah Department of Transportation

  Research and Innovation Division
  Salt Lake City, UT  United States  84114
• Project Managers:

  Jensen, Travis

• Performing Organizations:

  Utah State University, Logan

  Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
  Logan, UT  United States  84332
• Principal Investigators:

  Esteghamati, Mohsen

• Start Date: 20260910
• Expected Completion Date: 20270831
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: Federal Highway Administration
• USDOT Program: Highway Safety Research
• USDOT Program: Office of Safety
• USDOT Program: Safety Data and Analysis
• Subprogram: Data and Analysis
• Subprogram: Highway Safety
• Subprogram: Safety Data

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data analysis; Datasets; Safety analysis; Transportation safety; Visual media
• Identifier Terms: Utah Department of Transportation
• Geographic Terms: Utah
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Safety and Human Factors; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 02001929
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Utah Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: 278357, UT26.3A
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Sep 10 2026 12:44PM