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”.