Continuous Quality Improvement Techniques for Data Collection in Asset Management Systems

Abstract

AbstractTransportation infrastructure assets are among the largest investments made by governmental agencies. These agencies use data on asset conditions to make decisions regarding the timing of maintenance activities, the type of treatment, and the resources to employ. To collect and record these data, agencies often utilize trained evaluators who assess the asset either on site or by analyzing photos and/or videos. These visual assessments are widely used to evaluate conditions of various assets, including pavement surface distresses. This paper describes a Data Quality Assessment & Improvement Framework (DQAIF) to measure and improve the performance of multiple evaluators of pavement distresses by controlling for subjective judgment by the individual evaluators. The DQAIF is based on a continuous quality improvement cyclic process that is based on the following main components: (1) assessment of the consistency over time—performed using linear regression analysis; (2) assessment of the agreement betwe...