DIGITAL ROAD INVENTORY SPURS TRAVIS COUNTY FIVE-YEAR ROAD PLAN

In order to fully assess and computerize their assets, Travis County, Texas used a pavement management system (PMS) coupled with digital imagining of the 1,220 miles of roadway in their jurisdiction. This article outlines the process, which begins with the photographic data information and concludes with the creation of a virtual layout of the County’s roadway. This project was begun in part due to the new governmental GASB 34 standard that requires Federal agencies to include their material assets in their accounting procedure. In this case, those assets would be the pavement and bridges of the roadway. The digital imaging was performed at night using an automated digital pavement distress surveying system and a vehicle-mounted camera with strobe lights, thus avoiding shadows that might occur during the daylight hours. Upon this, the raw images were arranged alongside the County’s GPS/GIS data and then organized in conjunction with the pavement management system. Having this information in a continuous virtualized roadway allows the county to locate potential problem areas without the time-consuming and somewhat inefficient “windshield survey” which is the common method of problem area identification.