RoadGuard — A Geolocation-Based Framework for Pothole Reporting and Road Maintenance Management

Road damage, including potholes and surface deterioration, affects travel comfort, vehicle condition, and road-user safety. In many communities, reports may arrive through separate channels and can be difficult to consolidate, prioritise, and track. This paper presents RoadGuard, a web-based prototype intended to support structured road-damage reporting and complaint management in the Mira-Bhayandar area of Maharashtra, India. The system is designed to let users submit a report with a description, severity information, a photograph, and location details where device permissions permit. A centralised administrative interface supports reviewing submitted complaints and updating their status, while users can check progress through complaint tracking. The project logbook describes a web stack based on React.js, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB Atlas, and Cloudinary. This manuscript documents the problem context, system workflow, architecture, implementation approach, preliminary functional checks, and evaluation limitations. The available evidence supports a prototype-level description; it does not include a formal test log, a measured GPS error study, a user study, or quantitative data about repair outcomes. Therefore, no numerical claims are made about detection accuracy, response-time reduction, or improved road safety. RoadGuard’s current contribution is the organisation of location-associated citizen reports and administrative status management in one workflow. Further work should record reproducible test cases, assess usability and security, evaluate duplicate-report handling, and consult relevant road-maintenance stakeholders before any operational deployment.