Asia-Pacific Sustainability Action Awards-Sustainability Action Awards SDG09:Silver
Taoyuan City Government Smart City and Community Development Commission
GPR-Based Proactive Road Subsidence Prevention and Tiered Risk Management
To address rising traffic loads and aging road infrastructure, in 2025 Taoyuan City Government's Office of Road Administration and Maintenance (ORAM) launched a self-initiated program of ground-penetrating-radar (GPR) inspection and tiered cavity prevention, shifting road maintenance from reactive emergency repair to proactive prevention in line with SDG 9 and SDG 11. ORAM deployed non-destructive GPR to locate latent voids beneath asphalt pavement and, referencing Japan's MLIT Hokuriku Bureau 2012 standard and the practice of Taipei's New Construction Office, established a four-tier (S/A/B/C) cavity-risk regime: S-grade is remediated immediately, A-grade tracked annually, B-grade every three years, C-grade every five. With a 2025 budget of US$350,000, it targeted 125 high-risk sites (87 roads) that subsided between 2022 and 2024, inspecting 16 roads totaling 91,770 m² and precisely locating 7 underground voids across 5 of them (S×2, A×1, B×3, C×1). Coordinates and depths are logged in the Taoyuan Road Management Information Center system, and an Emergency Response SOP for Sudden Subsidence secures the site within one hour and excavates to verify within 24 hours, safeguarding road