Beth - The Eastern Region Municipality has started using three new, advanced technologies, 24 hours a day. They consist of modern equipment with world-class

specifications, to drain rain, fill pits, monitor and treat roads, improve the urban landscape, and reduce road disasters that may occur during and after rains.

Construction and Projects Agency will deploy the new technology as mobile units (trucks), each of which has a special function, including trucks used by Rapid Intervention Unit to drain rain water through supported pumps, as it enters the affected sites of high levels of rainwater. It consists of a hydraulic pump, rainwater dewatering hoses, and a submersible pump, and it pumps large quantities per hour. Its capacity for dewatering is (12) cubic meters per minute, (200) liters per second.

The Municipality also uses the Jetpatcher unit, which deals with the rapid processing of pits using positively charged asphalt emulsions on roads and other paved areas, as they are used to treat “grooves (small pits), edge joints (the height of the asphalt layer than other layers in the road), sidewalks, path grooves, wheel groves(ground dips arising in the form of long grooves on the asphalt road as a result of frequent traffic on them and their poor condition), isolating or bridging road cracks , repairing potholes due to drilling operations that were done to install electricity cables or water pipes, as well as repairing corrosion and aging of roads.

It is considered very fast in maintenance work and does not disrupt traffic, reduces waste, and finishes repairs within 5 to 10 minutes with the possibility of cars passing directly after the repair without waiting, as it is done through blowing all the loose debris then blowing water from the small hole to clean it, before covering it with asphalt
sump, and it is sprayed by the operator .To speed the spray mechanism it is pressed from the bottom to the top. The wet surface is protected by dry or sprayed debris from the machine. Its daily productivity ranges between (300) -(400) m 2, for covering (30) - (40) holes.

The third equipment used by the Municipality is the “Digital Imaging Equipment for Road Traffic and Roughness Measurement”, which performs digital scanning of road defects by using a laser unit and is equipped with an infrared system , 3 accelerators, 3 gears, a scope, and GPS are used to detect day or night road defects and to calculate the outputs, as the road roughness measurement (IRI) has become the most widely used road roughness indicator for evaluating and managing road systems. This equipment performs digital imaging of the roadway through a 360-degree camera with precision that contains 6 sensors for imaging with a resolution of 2448 * 2048, and its productivity is equivalent to 6 million square meters per month.

Thus Dammam metropolitan roads can be surveyed in a period of 6 months 6 times higher than the regular inspection teams, as the average work of 3 inspection teams is
about one million square meters per month.

The information extracted automatically from the equipment into the road maintenance management system, and then transferred to the GIS programs according to the international rates and specifications to assess the condition of the roads and the appropriate types of maintenance for each damage.