A high-tech modified passenger van is Friendswood's newest tool to keep an eye on its road conditions and identify areas for repair and maintenance. Infrastructure Management Services was hired last year to develop a plan to evaluate the city's streets. The Road Service Tester van uses a suite of technology — lasers, distance measuring instruments, accelerometers and gyroscopes, inertial navigation-based GPS and high-resolution digital cameras — to collect data on road surfaces, roughness and cutting. You might see the van in traffic as it moves through city streets. You'll know it by the large front bumper that juts out from the frame of the vehicle. Based on the data, a description is given to each section of pavement that includes its spot on a life-cycle curve. The information can be used to prioritize and schedule pavement projects, potentially saving taxpayers money by more effectively scheduling maintenance, according to a press release. “This is very valuable data for the City to have. We should be able to make budget proposals, based on the data collection being done now, for Fiscal Year 2018-19,” Patrick Donart, director of public works, said in the release. Previously, road conditions had been evaluated by a trained visual inspector. The last such survey was in 2008.