Road Profiles (ProfilingPRO) - RoadScope Documentation

What Are Road Profiles?

Road profiles are high-resolution chainage/elevation datasets captured in the field (for example with ProfilingPRO or GNSS equipment). Unlike the automatic route elevation profile, road profiles carry survey-grade vertical data with a declared vertical datum, making them suitable for grounding analysis and CAD deliverables.

What You Need to Know

ProfilingPRO is a Windows survey application for oversize and heavy transport. A survey-grade GNSS receiver on a moving truck measures the road surface; it is not a DEM estimate. It records elevation corrected for antenna height, grade over the selected smoothing baseline, horizontal turn radius, vertical curvature (K and crest/sag), and per-point receiver quality. With a second receiver it also measures crown/cross-slope and precise heading and records the diagnostics needed to judge those measurements.

RoadScope imports the measured profile, its surveyed trace, curvature/radius/crown channels, point quality and dual-receiver diagnostics, provenance, geometry-alert stretches, and recording-session events. Empty values stay not measured: a blank radius is not changed to “straight”, and blank crown is not changed to zero. Session events such as no fix, receiver failover, stale data, or write/storage trouble describe reliability during the drive and cannot be recreated from road geometry.

Two distinctions matter when reviewing the result. First, grade colours are fixed absolute bands: green below 10%, blue from 10% to below 12%, amber from 12% to below 14%, red from 14% to below 16%, and black at 16% or above. Cab alarm thresholds are operator settings carried in provenance; they do not change those colours. Second, scrape, tight-turn, compound-curve, crown, and superelevation alerts can depend on the load dimensions used in ProfilingPRO. Read them with that load provenance, not as unconditional properties of the road.

Datum and baseline are part of the measurement. Check the declared horizontal/vertical datum before overlaying another dataset or transforming coordinates, and compare grades only when their smoothing baselines are understood. Float or standalone quality can still support differential grade review, but absolute elevation and dual-receiver crown require the quality context shown by RoadScope.

Syncing from ProfilingPRO

Profiles captured with the ProfilingPRO mobile app upload to your survey automatically through the cloud integration — no manual file transfer. Synced profiles appear in the Road Profiles panel with a measured source label (RTK, GNSS, or NMEA log) and their datum metadata intact, and behave exactly like imported profiles from there on: view, merge, link to a route, and export.

Importing a Profile

1. Open the Road Profiles panel from your project map

2. Click Import a CSV profile and select one or more ProfilingPRO profile exports

3. Confirm the vertical datum (ellipsoidal or orthometric + geoid model) and the data source

4. Review the preview chart, then save

ProfilingPRO profile data imports directly from detail CSV, full-session CSV, and profile GeoJSON exports. Detail and full-session CSV files provide chainage and elevation; for a full-session file, RoadScope uses the embedded profile records rather than the interleaved raw GNSS fixes. # metadata headers (datum, geoid, source) are read automatically. Files with latitude/longitude columns can be projected onto a route corridor at import time.

A profile GeoJSON can be imported even after another GIS tool has stripped its properties: RoadScope derives chainage from the LineString coordinates and reads elevation from the coordinate Z values. When the original properties are present, it also keeps the supplied chainage, elevation, timestamps, and quality context.

Provenance Sidecars

Select a matching *_provenance.json sidecar with its profile export whenever you have one. RoadScope pairs the files automatically and uses the sidecar as the authoritative source for vertical datum/geoid information, RTK-fixed percentage, smoothing, and other survey provenance. If no file or sidecar declares a datum, the profile is clearly flagged as undocumented instead of assuming one.

Multi-File Import with Automatic Merge

Long runs are often auto-split into ~50 km files. The import picker accepts multiple files at once:

Segments are ordered by their segment N of M markers from the filename, metadata, or provenance sidecar; unmarked files use natural filename order (run_2 before run_10)

Deliberate overlapping samples at each seam are removed automatically, and chainage is re-derived from GPS coordinates when every segment carries them

A gap greater than 50 m between consecutive GPS segments is refused: it indicates separate recordings, not one split run

You preview the full merged profile before confirming

Files with different vertical datums or geoid models are refused — mixing vertical referentials would corrupt elevations.

Files That Are Deliberately Not Imported

ProfilingPRO summary and alerts exports are derived from the same source profile, while gnss_raw files contain raw fixes whose antenna-height treatment is not suitable for a road profile. RoadScope recognizes these files and explains why they are skipped; choose the detail CSV, full-session CSV, or profile GeoJSON instead. Malformed or truncated profile files are refused without a partial import — for example, a GeoJSON point_count that does not match its coordinates is treated as truncated.

Merging Existing Profiles

Already imported the pieces separately? Select 2 to 10 profiles in the Road Profiles panel and click Merge. Profiles are joined in your selection order, a new profile named "(merged ×n)" is created, and the originals are kept untouched.

Linking to a Route Corridor

Attach a profile to one of your routes to enable chainage-to-map projection (required for GeoJSON export) and optional resampling at a fixed step. Note: resampling a merged profile removes its segment split metadata, since the original file boundaries no longer map to real samples.

Exporting — Complete or Split by Segment

Export formats: CSV, GeoJSON, SVG, PNG, LandXML, and DXF. If the profile was created by a merge, a Scope selector appears in the viewer: export the complete profile or any individual source segment. Segment exports keep the merged chainage so they stay consistent with the corridor projection and the complete export.

The vertical datum always travels with the deliverable (CSV header, GeoJSON properties, SVG legend, DXF text, LandXML coordinate system). ProfilingPRO CSV and GeoJSON deliverables also keep supplied grade, horizontal radius, K/curvature, crown, quality, timestamps, and dual-receiver diagnostic channels; absent readings remain empty/null. Provenance headers carry available baseline, thresholds, reliability, and load context. LandXML export is refused when the datum is unknown.

Grounding Check & Report

The viewer includes a grounding verdict based on a two-support model (interaxle spacing + ground clearance): a crest between the supports can ground the load, while a dip actually improves clearance. Generate the Road Profile report from the Reports Hub for a formatted deliverable with the chart, grounding verdict, and datum declaration.