Annele Matintupa will take over as CEO of Roadscanners Oy on 1 August 2022
Annele Matintupa, DI, will take over as CEO of Roadscanners Oy on 1 August 2022. Since 1 March 2021, she served as the company’s executive vice president and has already worked in various jobs in the company since 2007. During a 15-year Roadscanners career, Matintupa has accumulated a wide range of experience in diagnostics and repair planning of traffic infrastructure, especially roads and streets, as well as property management and related research projects.
“I know the company and its strengths very well through my long work history. Our strength lies in the expertise of personnel and software and equipment products that enable us to meet the future challenges of traffic infrastructure both in Finland and over the world. It is great to be able to continue the story of Roadscanners on the excellent foundation that Timo Saarenketo has created,” Matintupa says.
Current CEO Timo Saarenketo, one of the company’s founders, will take over as Chairman of the Board of Roadscanners Oy after 24 years as CEO. He continues to work as an expert in various domestic and international research projects, as well as in educational assignments.
“Almost a quarter of a century at the helm of Roadscanners Oy has been an educational and remunerating time. We have managed to gain a prestigious world position in traffic diagnostics and asset management, but there is still a lot of work with future challenges. Annele Matintupa has proven her ability to pull demanding projects over the years and under her leadership Roadscanners will continue its growth based on strong R&D work, says Saarenketo”
Roadscanners is attending IRF World Meeting in Dubai.
The exhibition will take place in person in Dubai on November 7-10, 2021.
The event is focused on delivering solutions to the world’s pressing mobility questions. Particular attention will be paid to emerging challenges such as readying road infrastructure to autonomous vehicles, advanced travel demand management, the safety of vulnerable road users, and energy-efficient infrastructure, to name a few.
Annele Matintupa, M.Sc. (Civ. Eng.), has been appointed Vice President of Roadscanners Oy as of March 1, 2021. She will be responsible for the company’s domestic markets. Annele Matintupa has been employed by Roadscanners Oy since 2007. She runs the operations at the company’s Tampere office.
In proactive maintenance of roads,road condition is followed regularly. The key to this strategy isto react to any detected flawsin road condition before they turn into more severe damages. One of the newest techniques is using 3D-accelerometers, which have already been used for the past ten yearson Road Doctor Survey Van (RDSV) and Road Doctor Maintenance Controller (RDMC) vehicles.
Modern 3D-accelerometers have several benefits in roughness surveys. They are installed directly onto the axles of the vans and,therefore, driving comfort can be directly measured. Vibrations,which affect driving safety, can also be measured in X, Y, and Z directions. Positioning is done accurately with GPS. Resultsfrom accelerometer measurements can be converted to International Roughness Index (IRI).
Frequency analysis of accelerometer data has provento be very useful in proactive maintenance of roads. In this analysis method, different wavelength components are calculated from accelerations. This makes it possible to define the reasons for roughness problems. Short waves describethe transverse cracks, medium waves describe the frost heaves, and long waves settlements. When measurements are performed regularly, targets with large settlements can be located. Early detection of deviations makes it possible to addressdeficiencies before they create serious problems, which could be very expensive to rehabilitate. Figure 1 presents an example from Road 83, its developments in accelerations since 2015. Inadequate drainage of a private access road causes uneven frost heave during winters that even out during the summer. This can be prevented orslowed significantly by improving the drainage.
The great benefit of accelerometers is that they can also be used in winter conditions and on dusty gravel roads, which is not possible with laser-basedroughness measurement equipment. Figure 2presents an interesting comparison from gravel road s13771. MSc. Anssi Hiekkalahti conducted research on this road,related to his master’s thesis,in the year 2012. In 2020, the gravel road was measured again, and comparisons between the two measurements were made. In theseresults, it can be seen that at the beginning of the road there are still problematic sections, the same sections which were already problematic in 2012. Conversely, at the end of thesection, the earlier problems havegone away and only one new one has appeared. This result indicates that,based on this accelerometer technique,the problematic sections which require some grading can be detected. With that simple maintenance operation,the problems can be solved. If operations are not performed, the problems will reappear annually.
UsingRoadscanners’ RDMC technique, which has been developed for road maintenance, the measured results can be uploaded to the Road Data Center cloud service in about 2 seconds, which makes real-time follow up and reportingfeasible. RDMC equipment can be installed on any vehicle.
Figure 1. Wavelength analysis of 3D-accelerometer data from 2015 from road 83 between Sinettäand Pello. Inthe figure, results from winters 2018 and 2019 are also presented. Roughness here is also seen as longer wavelengths which shows that problems are related to frost heaves. Other anomalies seem to be related to transverse cracks.
Figure 2. Accelerometer results from the year 2012, the lowest one is from September 11th, 2020. The levels of the accelerations have changed, because of newer and more accurate sensors, but local roughness related to potholes can be seen in both measurements.
On May 2nd 2019, Finland-based Roadscanners Oy sold its Rail Division business, including its Rail Doctor® software and related intellectual property rights, to Loram Finland Oy, owned by US-based Loram Maintenance of Way, Inc. In addition, Roadscanners’ Rail Division personnel will move to Loram Finland Oy in Tampere.
Located in Hamel, Minnesota, and established in 1954, Loram Maintenance of Way, Inc is one of the world´s foremost railway maintenance companies, specialized in maintenance equipment, contracting and consulting services. The acquisition will reinforce Loram’s know-how and service portfolio.
After the sale, Roadscanners Oy will continue its business in other sectors, including its Road Division and Software and Hardware Division, in the field of road, street, bridge and airport condition surveys, diagnostics and asset management. In addition, Roadscanners will continue investing in ITS-related research and development work. Roadscanners Oy subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway, Czech Republic and the USA will continue under Roadscanners Oy ownership.
