Road Asset Management Research Articles

Integrating disaster management planning into road infrastructure asset management

Climate change presents challenges for road infrastructure asset managers, with uncertainty about the impacts of increasingly frequent and intense disasters on asset functionality and lifespan. Budgeting for disaster response and recovery is improving; however, there are calls for more evidence to support budget allocations. This exploratory study aimed to create a systematic approach for integrating climate-related disaster risks within road asset evaluation, towards improving the evidence-base for capital works and maintenance budgets. It involved a systematic literature review of 63 research papers about resilient road infrastructure, followed by sense-checking key findings through eight semi-structured interviews with road asset management experts from the Australian government and industry. The authors present a set of 15 parameters for evaluating road infrastructure resilience, within four commonly used asset management categories: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness and rapidity. These are placed within a disaster management planning framework for resilient road infrastructure outcomes, with the key parameters matched to the commonly used disaster management phases of ‘Prevent, Prepare, Respond, Recover’. The parameters and the framework have immediate use for road infrastructure asset managers, providing clear decision-support regarding what data are important to collect and analyse and at what time, to inform capital works and maintenance budgets.

Implementation Of Road Asset Management In Poland

Road asset management (RAM) is a crucial aspect in the development of transportation network. RAM framework should be understood as a rational approach to business model for road authority, which dictates its business processes in a systematic and objective-based manner to ensure that strategic goals of an agency are reached. In a case of road network, such objectives are typically related to travel safety, time and comfort that should be maintained throughout the life cycle of the road assets at optimal costs. As such RAM enables road agencies to meet expectations of its customers to provide safe and reliable road network in effective and efficient way. Nowadays it becomes even more important to adopt performance-based and data-driven approach for road agencies considering current trends in transportation like connected, cooperative and automated mobility.There are many aspects of RAM including legal, economic, technical and managing aspects. These aspects are inter-connected and nowadays agencies build and incorporate RAM system to establish a common denominator for all agency activities at all organizational levels. This paper discusses selected aspects of RAM in Poland. Since national road network in Poland is relatively new, it is particularly important to go over well designed and detailed implementation process. It should comprise numerous items including self-assessment and gap analysis, change strategy and transportation asset management plan (TAMP). This paper present update on these activities as well as presents future plans in order to establish modern, effective and sustainable RAM framework in Poland.

Ontology-Based Information Integration: A State-of-the-Art Review in Road Asset Management

Ontology-Based Information Integration: A State-of-the-Art Review in Road Asset Management

Road Asset Management Assessment

Albanian Road Authority (ARA) under the administration of the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure. It is responsible agency for the process of construction and maintenance of national and regional roads. Albanian Development Fund (ADF) is the agency for construction of rural and regional road infrastructure, also training for maintenance and management of municipalities responsible for maintenance of the urban and rural roads. ARA and ADF are using public funds for the construction of road infrastructure network, so due to restriction budgetary in road maintenance they the need to develop a strategy for the management and financial of maintenance, based on current accounting principles and efficiency of public funds in order to ensure safety and cost saving users. This includes the use of a balance of investments made to launch a database for years and the development of basic documents for the planning and control of public spending in these activities. The question that arises and requires an analysis is: a generally accepted value will be calculated for the infrastructure during its useful life, using the principles of sound accounting and valuation of real estate activities internationally applied. The results show that the existing accounting standards are suitable for use in infrastructure management, allowing a better control of public spending on infrastructure, while the principles of technical assessment of public infrastructure assets require the creation of a database and inventory for all road classification.

Infrastructure Health Monitoring and Economic Analysis for Road Asset Management : Focused on Sejong City

Infrastructure Health Monitoring and Economic Analysis for Road Asset Management : Focused on Sejong City

Development of method for road network management program optimization

The object of research is the processes of road network management. The main hypothesis of the study is the application of optimization methods to the road asset management program, which allows to implement a road maintenance strategy, which includes a set of measures involved in ensuring and maintaining roads at the appropriate operational level. In general, the sequence of asset management begins with the definition of objectives, policy of road administrations and the available budget. According to this starting point, data collection, performance monitoring, analysis of options and optimization programs, selection and implementation of a set of projects are performed. The goals and objectives of road project management depending on the category are considered. The model of strategic planning of the program on management of a network of highways is offered and the modern architecture of model is constructed. The main approaches to the optimization of the road asset management program are identified. The target function for the optimization model is proposed, which is to minimize the cost of maintenance of the road network and defines the goals to be achieved in the optimization process. The optimization model is a mathematical description designed to compare alternative strategies and identify the relative benefits of each strategy according to the assigned decision criteria, such as safety, cost, environment and others. The main idea and goal of road network management projects is to improve maintenance practices and policies and thus improve the condition of the network, or maintain it at the current level, taking into account resource constraints. The results of program optimization have practical value and can be used to manage road repair and operation projects depending on: – defined project goals and plans, including scheduling, budgeting, planning, established efficiency requirements and selection of project participants; – maximizing the efficient use of resources; – implementation of functions of coordination and control, planning, design, evaluation, conclusion of contracts and implementation of projects under contracts.

Development and evaluation of relationships between surface condition rating and objective pavement condition parameters

ABSTRACT Highway authorities make efforts to relate visual ratings with directly measured pavement condition data to reduce or remove the necessity of manual pavement condition surveys that involve subjectivity and potential safety risk of assessors. This research develops a set of relationships between pavement surface condition rating and objective pavement condition parameters to assist road asset managers in triggering periodic bituminous resurfacing programs at the network level. These condition parameters include cracking (% area affected), rutting (mm), texture loss (% of left wheel path texture), and roughness (m/km). In the literature, deterministic and probabilistic modelling approaches are used to predict visual surface inspection rating (SIR) from directly measured pavement distresses. The Factorial ANOVA results that are typically used have inferred that cracking and rutting interact with each other significantly for the asphalt surfaced road network. However, the percentages of variation explained by the linear regression models that predict SIR from cracking/rutting are low (24–31%). Alternatively, developed ordinal logistic models for predicting the probability of a road section being in any particular surface condition, with any quantified cracking/rutting data, prove to be statistically better with overall success rates of 46% and 51% for sprayed sealed and asphalt surfaced network, respectively.

DeepAutoMapping: low-cost and real-time geospatial map generation method using deep learning and video streams

Field data collection and geospatial map generation are critical aspects in different fields such as road asset management, urban planning, and geospatial applications. However, one of the primary impediments to data collection is the availability of spatial and attribute data. This issue is aggravated by the high cost of conventional data collection and data processing methods and by the lack of geospatial data collection policies. This study proposes an inexpensive approach that enables real-time field data observation and geospatial data generation from video streams connected to a laptop and positioning sensors using deep learning technology. This proposed method was evaluated via an application called “DeepAutoMapping”, which was built on top of Python, then underwent through two different evaluation scenarios. The results demonstrated that the proposed approach is quick, easy to use and that it provides a high detection accuracy and an acceptable positioning accuracy in the outdoor environment. The proposed solution may also be considered as a pipeline for efficient and economical method of geospatial data collection and auto-map generation in the future.

Investigation on Identifying Road Anomalies using In-Vehicle Sensors for Cooperative Applications and Road Asset Management

One of the main challenges for road authorities is to maintain the quality of the road infrastructure. Road anomalies can have a significant impact on traffic flow, the condition of vehicles, and the comfort of occupants of vehicles. Strategies such as pavement management systems use pavement evaluation vehicles that are equipped with state-of-the-art devices to assist road authorities in identifying and repairing these anomalies. The quantity of data available is limited, however, by the limited availability and, therefore, coverage of these vehicles. To address this problem, several investigations have been conducted on the use of smartphones or equipping vehicles with additional sensors to identify the presence of road anomalies. This paper aims to add to this arsenal by using sensors already available in production vehicles to identify road anomalies. If production vehicles could be used to identify road anomalies, then road authorities would be equipped with an additional fleet of mobile sensors (vehicles traveling on a particular road) to receive initial insights into the presence of anomalies. This information could then be used to assist road authorities to deploy their staff and equipment more precisely at these locations, such that appropriate equipment reaches the right place at the right time. In this paper, an algorithm that uses lateral acceleration and individual wheel speed signals, which are commonly available vehicular variables, was developed to detect potholes using machine learning techniques. The results of the algorithm were validated with real life test scenarios.

An overview road data collection, visualization, and analysis from the perspective of developing countries

Road data collection went through dramatic changes over the course of technology enhancement. It started with simple paper sketches of pavement distresses, then manual and automatic road data collection, current trends are mobile phone-based road data collection and in near future connected/autonomous vehicles based road data collection will dominate. The evolution of road data collection methods shows how technology is shaping the way how data is collected, stored and analyzed. Even though the technology is rapidly progressing, most of the developing countries are still practicing manual (visual) road data collection practices. The paper overviews the advantages and disadvantages each approach describes data quantity requirements proposes an approach for road asset management systems in developing countries. It also highlights how to visualize road data by utilization open-source GIS software and briefly overviews turnkey solutions for road asset management.

A Comparison of Network Level Pavement Condition Assessment in Road Asset Management

Transportation agencies face the challenging task to maintain, preserve and improve infrastructure condition while with limited funding. Pavements are one of the major assets of roadway systems and pavement management system (PMS) are broadly accepted and implemented by agencies and organizations to maintain pavement structures at a high level of service. PMS is a set of tools to support the decision-making process for determining the demand of maintenance, prioritizing projects and optimizing funding allocation. Pavement condition monitoring may be evaluated or assessed by means of various indicators. Performance indicators are an essential part in a PMS, individual performance indicators (IPIs) and combined performance indicators (CPIs) are proposed to monitor and report pavement conditions. IPIs characterize the general condition of the various types of pavement distress which can be related to road performance. The CPI for each road type can be developed or calculated from IPIs. Focus on network level analysis of road pavements, the objective of this paper is to review and compare the development and application of performance indicators for assessment of pavement condition of different country’s guidelines. The utilization and integration mechanism of individual indicator are described and compared among selected country guidelines. The prospective indicators and techniques for future application are further discussed. It can be conclude from this study that the majority studied guidelines have placed great emphasis on surface distress and roughness for pavement condition assessment; international roughness index (IRI) is the most commonly used parameter for evaluation of road roughness due to its objectivity while the determination of surface distress is more subjective. The integration methods from IPIs into CPIs can be summarized as “deduct system method”, “sum system method”, “weighted sum method” and “equation method”.

Road Asset Management Practices in Ethiopia the Case of Addis Ababa

Currently, the construction industry is one of the biggest industries in Ethiopia contributing 10% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It needs to be emphasized that road construction in Ethiopia is the means through which development are achieved. The economic growth of the country depends on availability and utilization of physical infrastructures. Road construction and utilization in Ethiopia are the means through which development strategies are achieved. The development of road construction projects can be enhanced through well-established Asset Management system that will improve tactical and operational decisions by applying the required knowledge to gain wisdom for provision of strategic infrastructures. However, most of the road construction in Ethiopia encounters problems due to lack of proper Asset Management practices. In this respect, this study’s objective was to investigate Roads Asset Management practices in Ethiopia the case of AACRA. In order to find answers to the research questions and to achieve the objectives of the study, quantitative and qualitative ways of research adapted. Interviews and questionnaires analyzed quantitatively whereas the desk study analyzed qualitatively explanatorily to assess alternatives, diagnose a situation, and discover new ideas. Accordingly, interpretation and discussion were made on the basis of results. The findings of the study revealed that there is lack of: Asset management system components implementation rated as low with a result of 54.5%, 63.6%, 64%, 82% and 73% respectively except condition assessment rated as medium with a result 45.5%, technologies like individual management system implementation in AACRA is in the planning phase as the response of the (7) professional in aggregate revealed, Integration of those management systems also is not there yet. Decision making levels are not explicitly defined in AACRA except programming and budgeting level rated as 54.5%. 91% of respondents revealed that there is lack of professional associations, conferences, short courses and 73% of the respondents disclosed that there is lack of organized asset management department. Some of the specific recommendations forwarded are decision making levels should be explicitly defined, applying different individual management systems and integration of those management systems is necessary and etc. Finally framework were developed for effective and efficient Road Asset Management.

Automatic Road Survey by Using Vehicle Mounted Laser for Road Asset Management

In most countries local roads (i.e., urban and rural) form over 80% of the entire road network and constitute the country's largest asset value. In order for local roads to remain fit for purpose and maintain their value, they require periodic maintenance. To make the best use of scarce maintenance resources, road maintenance needs to be preventative which requires the condition of the road to be assessed periodically. Traditional road surveys suffer from the lack of repeatability and reproducibility, are high cost and time consuming. This work proposes a vehicle mounted point laser system for the automated, rapid and inexpensive measurement of a major mode of local road deterioration, namely fretting. Compared to other technologies such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), visual sensors and the Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) system, the point laser requires less computational power, is less sensitive to the surrounding environment and is of comparatively low cost. A robust approach is proposed which consists of a number of pre-processing algorithms to deal with noise and the effects of the vehicles dynamic motion, and a signal processing algorithm which analyses histograms of the distance from the road surface measured by the laser to account for changes in road texture. Road fretting measured by the proposed system on a variety of roads is compared with fretting determined using a standard visual assessment process. The results indicate that the proposed system can measure road fretting to the levels of detail which are suitable for planning, programming and preparations road management functions.

Coarse-to-Fine Classification of Road Infrastructure Elements from Mobile Point Clouds Using Symmetric Ensemble Point Network and Euclidean Cluster Extraction.

Classifying point clouds obtained from mobile laser scanning of road environments is a fundamental yet challenging problem for road asset management and unmanned vehicle navigation. Deep learning networks need no prior knowledge to classify multiple objects, but often generate a certain amount of false predictions. However, traditional clustering methods often involve leveraging a priori knowledge, but may lack generalisability compared to deep learning networks. This paper presents a classification method that coarsely classifies multiple objects of road infrastructure with a symmetric ensemble point (SEP) network and then refines the results with a Euclidean cluster extraction (ECE) algorithm. The SEP network applies a symmetric function to capture relevant structural features at different scales and select optimal sub-samples using an ensemble method. The ECE subsequently adjusts points that have been predicted incorrectly by the first step. The experimental results indicate that this method effectively extracts six types of road infrastructure elements: road surfaces, buildings, walls, traffic signs, trees and streetlights. The overall accuracy of the SEP-ECE method improves by 3.97% with respect to PointNet. The achieved average classification accuracy is approximately , which is suitable for practical use in transportation network management.

Data Analytics in Asset Management: Cost-Effective Prediction of the Pavement Condition Index

AbstractUnderstanding the deterioration of roads is an important part of road asset management. In this study, the long-term pavement performance (LTPP) data and machine learning algorithms were us...

A Novel Processing Methodology for Traffic-Speed Road Surveys Using Point Lasers

The rapidly increasing traffic volumes using local road networks allied to the implications of climate change drive the demand for cost-effective, reliable and accurate road condition assessment. A particular concern for local road asset managers is the loss of material from the road surface known as fretting which unchecked can lead to potholes. In order to assess the road condition quantitatively and affordably, a system should be designed with low complexity, be capable of operating in a variety of weather conditions and operate at normal traffic-speeds. Many different techniques have been developed for road condition assessment such as ground penetrating radar, visual sensors and mobile scanning lasers. In this work, the use of the point laser technique for scanning the road surface is investigated. It has the advantages of being sufficiently accurate, is relatively unaffected by levels of illumination and it produces relatively low volumes of data. In this work, road fretting/surface disintegration was determined using a novel signal processing approach which considers a number of features of reflected laser signals. The proposed methodology was demonstrated using data collected from the UK’s local road network. The experimental results indicate that the proposed system can assess road fretting to an accuracy which is comparable to a visual inspection, and at Information Quality Level (IQL) 3 which is sufficient for tactical road asset management whereby road sections requiring treatment are selected and appropriate treatments identified.

An Empirical Assessment of the Success of Road Asset Management System in Tanzania and Its Economic Value in Managing and Planning for Roads Pavement

The deployment of Information Communication Technology in the Road sector has contributed positively towards achieving the national goal of ICT for infrastructure development. However, the deployment of ICT software for Road infrastructure in underdeveloped countries has been done with duplication of efforts contributing to software failure. This study aimed in evaluating the effectiveness and economic values of the Road Maintenance Management System in Tanzania. The study deployed System Usability Scale Framework in 26 regions of Tanzania, and Kruskal-Wallis test was used for significance testing. The result indicates positive response of adopting and scaling the Road Maintenance Management System to all 26 regions in the country with R2=0.863. The usability of the system remains steady for almost three years from 2017 to 2019. The economic value of system is found to be above average (61%), while the value for money is found to reach 76.5% of the expectation. It is therefore concluded that the use of ICT in planning for Roads Maintenance increases efficiency in delivery critical factors that facilitated decision making in road planning and also improves specific services delivery in government efficiency.

Framework for Monitoring of Road Agency Performance in Rural Road Asset Management

The Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) is providing technical assistance and capacity building initiatives to foster sustainable improvements in asset management performance in selected rural road agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Central to the research methodology is the development of a specification to enable road agencies to assess their performance in asset management as a basis for self-improvement. The specification is based on the development of an objectively determinable “road sector sustainability index” which measures the extent to which six building blocks considered essential for achieving effective road asset preservation are satisfied in practice. Periodic measurements of the condition of the project road networks, coupled with the collection of socioeconomic data, are being used to monitor the trend in road asset value, and to assess the effectiveness of, and improvements in, asset management as well as the impact of road condition on the wellbeing of rural communities. This paper outlines methodologies and tools that have been developed and piloted in four Sub-Saharan African countries to assess and monitor performance in rural road asset management and to achieve improvements over time. It summarizes progress achieved in the first 3 years since the project’s inception. The initial findings of the research indicate that severe institutional, funding, and technical shortcomings exist in the participating countries that preclude sustainable road asset preservation. However, following implementation of the methods summarized here, there is now an increased awareness of the importance of adopting a holistic approach to road asset management using simple and sustainable methods.

Robotic and autonomous systems for road asset management: a position paper

The ever-growing urban population faces challenges of ageing infrastructure. The process for renewing the infrastructure is costly, and current practices for maintaining and repairing are often ineffective and labour intensive. Road networks, for instance, which act as the arteries of cities, suffer from reoccurring potholes (in the UK, a pothole is filled every 21 s). A more effective way of maintaining road networks is through a proactive approach, where condition assessment and intervention are conducted throughout the asset life cycle. However, there are barriers to a proactive approach, including budget constraints and the lack of effective technology for early defect detection (followed by a cheap yet effective repair). This paper puts forward an automated system, currently in development, based on cutting-edge robotic technologies to address these barriers and help achieve an effective proactive infrastructure maintenance and repair system. Technologies developed include automated condition assessment measures to detect road defects and repair technologies using a novel three-dimensional (3D) printing method to seal road cracks and potholes. Sealing small cracks by using 3D printing techniques has shown promising results by achieving superior mechanical properties.

Location definition for road asset management systems: case of Sarawak Public Works Department

Sarawak Public Works Department will be expected, in the near future, to change the way their road assets are designed, constructed and managed. Currently, there is a need to identify how road asset information is being collected, stored and retrieved. Location definition is an attribute that provides a simple framework for the identification of current technical requirements to exchange information within the relevant road asset management system. The balance of this paper presents an overview of the current road asset management systems and their location definition. The findings are results of the analysis of asset management systems and standards as well as the verbal engagement with PWD Sarawak experts in this field. The findings suggest that emerging systems and processes are moving from solely linear referenced models towards incorporating geospatial location data at different dimensional levels. Given this evolution, in this paper, road asset management systems are classified into three location definition categories considering their location referencing methods and their levels of dimensional detail. However, further research is required within PWD Sarawak to identify required location referencing in order to improve automation of the information exchange between the emerging BIM models, geospatial systems and the automated data collection tools.