Pavement Management

1. Inventory – road signs and road markings linked to GPS coordinates.
2. Condition – sign and road conditions linked to GPS coordinates.
3. Prioritisation – rank projects by applying algorithms to the inventory and conditions counts, based on approved criteria.
4. Work programme – schedule maintenance and rehabilitation projects using the list of prioritised projects.
5. Budget – annual financial needs for maintenance and rehabilitation projects, as well as past expenditure can be included.
6. Web-enabled - clients have full and easy access to all data through a user-friendly interface which integrates with the client’s existing systems.
7. Monitoring - Using handheld devices, maintenance teams can be sent out to rehabilitate a road or condition at the correct geographic location, while their actions are incorporated into the database. Field teams can use a GIS-enabled handheld device to reduce time to locate an area that requires attention.

Inivit Systems recognizes the current investment in existing pavement management systems and wealth of experience with the operation of these systems.  We can also assist our clients in focusing our efforts on evaluating and enhancing the ability of existing systems, ensuring:

• Comprehensiveness: must address all the major issues of performance of roads;
• Flexibility: to accommodate different functional classes, priorities over system objectives, preferences over different functional activities, etc.;
• Applicability: must be structured in a manner which enables continuity in management functions;
• Sensitivity: to serve as a sound strategic decision making aid, the system must be capable of analyzing impacts of changing macro-economic factors such as changes in the type and intensity of traffic loadings;
• Manageability: the system must be as simple as possible.  The types of data collected, interval and time frequency should be warranted. Sufficient data should be captured to enable the system to function adequately, without unnecessary and costly over collection making the system difficult to administer, and;
• Dedication: specific staff must be trained and tasked with overall management of each sub-system.

Supplemental Data Collection Surveys

Revision of data collection strategies together with updated components of the system may require collection of supplemental data (in addition to data collected as part of the High Speed Geographic Audit). Strategies for data collection may include provision of sufficient data to use on network level, but also to serve as inputs into preliminary project level investigations.  Or, enhanced deterioration prediction models may require more detailed inputs than those required for basic asset condition purposes.   Typical supplemental data that may be required for pavement management systems (and to complement other systems) include (but are not limited to):

• Falling Weigh Deflectometer (FWD) surveys:  These devices measure pavement deflection and are increasing used worldwide to evaluate pavement strength and as an to effectively divide network sections into analysis sections.
• High Speed Laser Profilometer surveys: These devices can measure the longitudinal and transverse profiles at intervals of 250 mm at highway speeds and provide important performance indicators such as road roughness (International Roughness Index), rutting (rut depth, water ponding potential etc.) and texture depth.  These parameters are not only used to evaluate structural condition and deterioration on an annual basis (roughness and rutting), but also serve as important road safety indicators.
• Skid resistance surveys: Devices such as the MKII Grip Tester is available to measure the skid resistance of the network.  This information, together with geometric and other data can be used to proactively highlight safety issues related to the road surface and triggering of subsequent investigations.

Analysis and Management of Network Condition

Inivit Systems has innovative technologies to their disposal to help network and project managers to prioritize, plan and design road rehabilitation and maintenance work. Key aspects that drive these developments are the provision of functionalities that are easy-to-use, designed to empower network managers to perform rapid in-depth analysis of their road network condition. 

Inivit Systems make use of the software solution called JunoViewer. This software has various data views which can interact with each other, thereby facilitating investigating different aspects of the data simultaneously. For example, one can look at performance indicators such as roughness, rutting and deflection data in a strip-map format, then highlight a segment of the road to instantly see the historical trend for a specific data type on that segment. One can also click on point data items (such as accidents or incidents) to view a detailed report for that data item.

Figure 1 : JunoViewer in action

This system can also be used to generate summaries about the network’s current condition and of past deterioration trends. These network level reports can be generated for individual road segments, for groups of segments (also known as sub-networks) or for the entire network. Sub-network definition is easy to do and can be customized to suit a specific network.   Generally, the system can be applied in the following areas of the pavement management cycle:

• Network trend analysis: Condition analysis and reporting, deterioration rate analysis, model calibration;
• FWP refinement and reporting: Field inspections, FWP refinement, and network level reporting;
• Day-to-day management: On-demand data display, support for maintenance and rehabilitation design, data synthesis.