Pavement Distress Initiation Prediction by Time-Lag Analysis and Logistic Regression

Abstract

Pavement condition prediction plays a vital role in pavement maintenance. Many prediction models and analyses have been conducted based on long-term pavement condition data. However, the condition evaluation for road sections can hardly support daily routine maintenance. This paper uses high-frequency pavement distress data to explore the relationship between distress initiation, weather, and geometric factors. Firstly, a framework is designed to extract the initial time of pavement distress. Weather and geometric data are integrated to establish a pavement distress initiation dataset. Then, the time-lag cross-correlation analysis methods were utilized to explore the relationship between distress initiation and environmental factors. In addition, the logistic regression model is used to establish the distress initiation prediction model. Finally, Akaike information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information criterions (BIC), and areas under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of logistic regression models with or without time-lag variables are compared as performance measurements. The results show that pavement distress initiation is susceptible to weather factors and location relationships. Daily total precipitation, minimum temperature, and daily average temperature have a time delay effect on the initiation of the pavement distress. Distress initiation is negatively correlated with the distance from the nearby intersection and positively correlated with adjacent distresses. The weather factors, considering the time-lag effect, can improve the model performance of the distress initiation prediction model and provide support for emergency management after severe weather.