Enhancing pavement management systems using GIS

Pavement management systems (PMS) are useful tools for highway agencies in quantifying the overall maintenance needs of pavements and presenting the alternative maintenance strategies under budget constraints. The most important aspect of development of a PMS is to collect, manage and analyse the pavement condition data in a considerably detailed format. Since geographical information systems (GIS), with their spatial analysis capabilities, match the geographical nature of the road networks, they are considered to be the most appropriate tools to enhance pavement management operations, with features such as graphical display of pavement condition. An attempt has been made in this paper to enhance the PMS process with GIS for an identified highway network. The PMS is based on internationally recognised Highway Development and Management System (HDM-4). The ‘programme analysis’ application of HDM-4 has been used for data analysis and the graphical presentation of the analysis results has been made using com...