Development of a Budget-Prioritized Pavement Management System based on Engineering Criteria

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to develop a budget-prioritized pavement management system (BpPMS) capable of selecting the most appropriate maintenance activities considering the corresponding cost-based priority for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation in Bangalore city, State of Karnataka, India. A total of 69 km of arterial roadway stretch covered with asphalt concrete pavements in one of the six zones of the city was used for pavement condition assessment and development of pavement condition indices. Since there were no previous records of pavement condition assessment, engineering criteria was recommended and developed based on the prevalent field conditions and pavement distresses. The pavement condition parametric indices were estimated using the engineering criteria based threshold indices, which were used as major inputs in the development of a BpPMS computer program. A unique feature of the ranking-prioritization based system toolkit is that it helps an agency to prefer to maintain only selective roadway network sections that are in dire need of maintenance and plan to defer actions for the rest of the sections as part of future maintenance. Overall, the approach taken in this study is a promising assessment concept which will aid an agency to implementing a network level BpPMS for the best upkeep of the region’s roadway infrastructure that would deteriorate otherwise owing to monetary constraints.