Improving Data Quality of Automated Pavement Condition Data Collection: Summary of State of the Practices of Transportation Agencies and Views of Professionals

Abstract

Automated or semi-automated pavement condition data collection is replacing manual data collection in many state and local highway agencies due to its advantages of reducing labor, time, and cost. However, the practical experience of highway agencies indicates that there are still data quality issues with the pavement condition data collected using existing image and sensor-based data collection technologies. This study aims to investigate the implementation experiences and issues of automated or semi-automated pavement condition surveys. An online questionnaire survey was conducted, along with scheduled virtual/phone interviews to gather information from government, industry, and academia about the state of the practice and state of the art. Open questions about the data quality and quality control & quality assurance (QC/QA) were used to receive first-hand inputs from highway agencies and pavement experts. The study has compiled the following observations: (1) Highway agencies urgently need a uniform data collection protocol for automated data collection; (2) the current QA requires too much human intervention; (3) cost ($100–$200 per mile) is a significant burden for state and local agencies; (4) the main issues regarding data quality are data inconsistencies and discrepancies; (5) agencies expect a greater accuracy once the image processing algorithms are improved using artificial intelligence technologies; and (6) existing automated data collection methods are not available for project-level data collection.