Others

An excellent thesis which shows how to integrate GHGs into optimising pavement maintenance programmes.

Investments in road infrastructure as a means for granting access and mobility have been an important part of the World Bank's strategy of fightingpoverty and increasing shared prosperity since its inception. Studies suggest that road infrastructure triggers economic development through reductions in transport and trade costs, which in turn leads to upgraded access to markets and social services (health, education, administrative, leisure); fosters agricultural production; alters production decisions; stimulates off-farm diversification; and catalyzes other income-earning opportunities. As a variate means to different ends, farmers use rural roads to take their produce to markets; workers to travel to their places of employment; tourists to head to their destinations; the pregnant and sick to seek urgent medical attention; children to get to school; transporters to make their deliveries; and families and friends to visit their loved ones. Bridging Africa's infrastructure gap is key to overcoming the continent’s development challenges. Road infrastructure is a key component of this effort. Inadequate road infrastructure retards economic growth potential by undermining the export competitiveness of agricultural produce and other manufactured goods; curtails the opportunity for employment and business development; and impedes human development efforts in health and education. World Bank estimates indicate that Africa needs 93 billion dollars a year for its infrastructure sectors, with about two-thirds of it required for new investment in physical infrastructure, and the other third for maintenance and operations. Of this amount, road infrastructure is expected to take up about 18 billion dollars.

Investments in road infrastructure as a means for granting access and mobility have been an important part of the World Bank's strategy of fightingpoverty and increasing shared prosperity since its inception. Studies suggest that road infrastructure triggers economic development through reductions in transport and trade costs, which in turn leads to upgraded access to markets and social services (health, education, administrative, leisure); fosters agricultural production; alters production decisions; stimulates off-farm diversification; and catalyzes other income-earning opportunities. As a variate means to different ends, farmers use rural roads to take their produce to markets; workers to travel to their places of employment; tourists to head to their destinations; the pregnant and sick to seek urgent medical attention; children to get to school; transporters to make their deliveries; and families and friends to visit their loved ones. Bridging Africa's infrastructure gap is key to overcoming the continent’s development challenges. Road infrastructure is a key component of this effort. Inadequate road infrastructure retards economic growth potential by undermining the export competitiveness of agricultural produce and other manufactured goods; curtails the opportunity for employment and business development; and impedes human development efforts in health and education. World Bank estimates indicate that Africa needs 93 billion dollars a year for its infrastructure sectors, with about two-thirds of it required for new investment in physical infrastructure, and the other third for maintenance and operations. Of this amount, road infrastructure is expected to take up about 18 billion dollars.

This report provides an evaluation framework, practices and supporting tools for evaluating road preservation and renewal treatment options for predominantly sprayed seal flexible pavements. It includes a compilation of case studies based on a pavement lifecycle costing analysis which draws on road agency pavement treatment practices and well-established economic principles. The reported case studies have demonstrated the optimum selection of asset preservation, renewal strategies and treatments used to prolong pavement life, including:

• the value of timely intervention

• where different levels of service are justifiable

• the need to understand the true treatment demand, including whether a treatment is required for functional reasons or to provide additional structural capacity

• the importance of accounting for all costs, including both routine and heavy repairs, to allow a true comparison to be made

• the benefits derived from a selection of safety-related treatments often applied in conjunction with preservation and renewal work.

The findings from the case studies and the methods and tools provided can aid practitioners in preparing their own cases and justifications and in ‘selling the message’ of appropriate asset preservation and improvement strategies to executives.

The Rural Access Index (RAI) is a measure of access, developed by the World Bank in 2006. It is now the key rural access indicator for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has been incorporated as SDG 9.1.1. This measures the proportion of the rural population living within 2 km of an all-season road, using GIS layers and relying on three data sources: population, road network location and condition.There is potential to use open source GIS data for population and road location, but the most challenging aspect of the RAI is to define the all-season status of the road network.

The World Bank defines the term all-season as ‘a road that is motorable all year round by the prevailing means of rural transport, allowing for occasional interruptions of short duration’. Every country measures its road condition in a different way and against different parameters, for example some countries use visual assessment, some use speed and some use road roughness. Similarly countries use different levels of condition, typically between three and five levels, for example Good, Fair and Poor. This makes finding consistency for the assessment of an all-season road between countries very challenging.

The UKAid funded programme Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) has commissioned research to refine the methodology for assessing SDG 9.1.1 to make it more sustainable, repeatable and consistent by using geospatial data and tools. This is an important aspect of refining the RAI and has been trialled in four countries, Ghana, Malawi, Myanmar and Nepal; selected for their diversity of environment and data. Where existing condition data exists, paved roads have been considered as ‘all-season’ if they are in Good or Fair condition, whereas unpaved roads would need to be in Good condition to be considered as all-season. Whilst this provides an initial coarse estimate of all-season access, it ignores a number of important issues with rural road networks, where for example poor condition paved roads and fair condition unpaved roads could provide all-season access, which could significantly affect the measurement of RAI.

TRL have developed a method of using ‘Accessibility Factors’ to determine the allseason status of road networks, using GIS tools. These factors are applied to the population and network location layers and substitute the need to measure the road condition, which can be an onerous and expensive process for low income countries.

This awareness-raising material aims to help address key management issues in implementing successful low-volume rural roads (LVRRs) programs, bearing in mind the broader strategic network and connectivity requirements. It describes the (i) importance of LVRRs; (ii) key management issues including policy, classification, design, sustainability, climate change impacts, development strategies, technology choices, safety, economic analysis, and knowledge development; and (iii) relevance of LVRR to Strategy 2030 of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It will enable ADB to engage with developing member countries (DMCs) that wish to improve portions of their LVRRs in an informed and comprehensive manner. (iv) Well-developed and well-managed LVRRs are essential for (v) integrating and improving efficiency of the overall transport network, (vi) integrating rural populations into national social and development programs, (vii) market-oriented agricultural development and food security, (viii) rural enterprise development, (ix) achieving more than half of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and (x) achieving ADB’s Strategy 2030 operational priority 5 “promoting rural development and food security

This document looks at the financing allocated to the maintenance of roads that have been decentralized to local administrations. A comparison is made between different countries in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific to show the different options that exist and how these have been implemented in different countries. The countries included in this document include very large countries and very small countries, countries with high road densities and countries with low road densities, relatively rich countries (with high GDP per capita) and relatively poor countries, highly decentralized countries and highly centralized countries. Although all these factors influence the way decentralized road maintenance is financed, the historical choices made in the countries also have a strong influence. Just because a particular option is applied in a certain type of country, does not necessarily mean that it is not suitable to other types of countries. This document presents the different options for financing the maintenance of decentralized roads, describing how these options are applied in different ways in each country and highlighting the advantages and challenges of each option.

This paper presents a methodology to identify key priority areas for transport investments. The methodology uses a geospatial data-driven approach and then proposes an innovative economic analysis for project appraisal. The two main steps involve (i) prioritization of road interventions based on a set of economic, social, and risk reduction criteria; and (ii) assessment of monetized and nonmonetized costs and benefits of road interventions under many scenarios covering the uncertainty on future risks and other factors. This methodology is used at different stages of project preparation for a rural roads lending operation to the Government of Mozambique. In the two regions of Mozambique considered, the analysis prioritizes regions along the coast when combining agriculture, fisheries, poverty, network criticality, and hazard risk criteria. With a limited budget of US$15 million per district, the results show that investing in repairing and rehabilitating culverts and bridges is the intervention that performs better under most of the scenarios.

Keynote address to the 2018 New Zealand Road Infrastructure Management conference on incorporating climate change considerations to asset management.

The road sector represents a significant asset to any country – both in terms of the physical cost to build it, and the social and economic benefits that it facilitates. Internationally accepted good practice is that the road asset should be appropriately managed through formal asset management techniques such as those laid out under the ISO55000 standard, the International Infrastructure Management Manual, or similar guidelines   While these standards and guidelines all permit the inclusion of climate change impacts into the asset management practices, there is little specific guidance on how to do so with the result being that many road authorities are still working in a business-as-usual mode.

 

Climate change, for whatever the cause, has the potential to be a serious disruptor to business-as-usual thinking for many of the most vulnerable countries in the world. The impacts of climate change are two-fold, with medium-long term changes in the average indicators (rainfall, temperature etc.) along with an increase in the occurrence of shock events such as large floods. With the past not being a good indicator of the future with regard to climate change, many of the asset management practices need to be refined to ready road authorities in advance of; during; and after climate change events.

 

This report describes asset management practices should be modified to prepare a road authority for climate change – ranging from modifications of high level policy statements; through to the maintenance of key assets. The key finding is that climate change is best integrated to asset management by being prepared for climate events, rather than through response plans. Not all of the recommended changes are applicable to all road authorities, and for some of the most vulnerable road networks it may be necessary to go beyond the level of effort recommended. However, application of the principles advocated here will ensure road authorities are prepared to address the challenges of climate change in managing their infrastructure.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are a group of countries located across the world in the Caribbean, Pacific, Africa, and Indian Ocean regions. They are all small in size, sparsely populated and geographically isolated, and their small economies are typically based on tourism, fisheries, agriculture, and small-scale manufacturing activities.

SIDS are among the most exposed and vulnerable countries to natural disasters in the world, and climate change is expected to exacerbate future risks, threatening development progress. Because of their location, small size, and topography, SIDS are exposed to severe hazards, including cyclones, extreme winds, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Compared to other countries, SIDS also suffer very high economic losses when extreme events strike, with average annual losses ranging between 1 and 10 percent of gross domestic product (Figure 1). Climate change will not only exacerbate disaster risks, but also have long-term impacts such as sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, and more extreme temperatures, which also require adapted management.

This report describes issues challenging SIDS, and how they can be addressed through asset management.

A reliable pavement performance prediction model is needed for road infrastructure asset management systems or pavement management systems. In this study, the data on roughness progression of asphalt pavements in the long-term pavement performance (LTPP) database was analyzed in order to develop such a model. The international roughness index (IRI) is a reasonable measure of the ride comfort
perceived by occupants of passenger cars and hence used as the basis for the pavement performance prediction model developed in this research. A quantitative relationship between roughness progression and accumulative traffic load, structural number, annual precipitation, and freezing index was developed and validated. Five pavement performance levels were developed to express the extent of asphalt
pavement deterioration. This is coupled with a reliability analysis based on the Weibull model to estimate the remaining service life of asphalt pavements. Effective treatments of pavements at the project level for each condition state level were also proposed, which can aid network level optimization of the overall condition and corresponding budget allocations.

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 501: Pavement Management Systems: Putting Data to Work documents current pavement management practices in state and provincial transportation agencies. The report focuses on the use of pavement management analysis results for resource allocation, determining treatment cost-effectiveness, program development, and communication with stakeholders.

This study identified longitudinal road roughness limit values based on measured vibration induced in a road-vehicle-driver interaction system. Therelations between measuredvehiclevibrationresponseand theinternationalroughnessindex(IRI) were summarized. Frequency-weighted acceleration on the seat and dynamic load coefficient (DLC) were used to quantify ride comfort, ride safety, and the dynamic load of the vehicle and road. Linear relationship coefficients were identified or taken from references. The expected large range of vibration responseroot mean square (RMS) values wasobserved for the same levelof IRI. IRI limit values were derivedfor chosen threshold values of vehicle vibration response as a function of vehicle velocity. Velocity-related IRI limit curves were proposed based on the fitting of IRI limit values lower envelope. IRI limit curves were compared with threshold proposals of other authors and width thresholds used in road maintenance. Some of the estimated IRI limit curves for DLC response were below thresholds used for road maintenance.

This article presents a new approach to designing public sector reform programmes, which we call a capacity map (CM). This approach focuses on the flow of public funds from the point of ‘extraction’ through to their ‘disbursement’, with specific attention to ‘leakages’ in that overall system. The CM is a modest attempt to provide development partners and their partner governments with a relatively simple, but effective, tool that complements other oft-used tools in the programme design process. To elucidate the CM approach, development partner attempts to support the establishment, or reform of, road maintenance regimes are focused on. The CM unpacks the process of road maintenance to identify leakages in the overall road maintenance system, thus enabling development partners to focus on institutional root causes beyond a singular focus on insufficient funds. It is contended that this tool enables the programme designer to develop focused interventions, whether in roads or other infrastructure projects, that move beyond ‘quick fixes’ that may avoid the difficult questions and hard choices that need to be made for sustainable institutional and policy reform.

The Data Standard for Road Management and Investment is being developed to provide Australian and New Zealand road agencies and their suppliers with a common approach to the specification of operational data.
The Standard will establish agreed definitions of data to ensure it is collected, used and interpreted appropriately and consistently.
The Standard provides guidance for road managers with different levels of sophistication in inventory and asset planning, and will benefit anyone who uses road related data for research, policy development, expenditure comparisons, funding approvals, national reporting, shared services and inter-organisation communications. It will also benefit innovation and national reforms.

This first version of the Standard has been prepared to provide information for road managers and the wider road sector. Austroads is now revising the Standard and plans to publish a second version in 2017. The 2017 version will contain additional data fields and be supported with an implementation plan.

The research presented in this thesis investigates the effect the data collection
process has on the results of the economic analysis in pavement management systems.
The incorporation of pavement management systems into software packages has enabled
local governments to easily implement and maintain an asset management plan. However
a general standard has yet to be set, enabling local governments to select from several
methods of data collection.

This report describes the output and results from a study for the Department for Transport (DfT) carried out by TRL Ltd and CH2M Hill to improve the evidence base for valuing the benefits of highways maintenance spending on local roads in England (excluding London). The purpose of the study was to demonstrate how the condition of the local road network evolves over time under different spending trajectories and how this impacts both maintenance and costs to road users and society.

Efficient and effective road transport is central to the economic growth and development of all African countries, this mode accounting for about eighty to ninety percent of the continent’s total trade in goods and services. For this reason countries need adequate road infrastructure management policies, strategies and institutions to manage this crucial asset in an optimal manner including systematic means of measuring the performance of the road agencies as a basis for determining those factors that aid or impede the attainment of their desired results.

In an endeavor to deepen the understanding of the factors that affect the performance of road agencies in road asset management, two evaluations of road agency performance using different approaches have been conducted in Africa during the past five years. The first approach uses the Commercialized Road Management (CRM) framework which focuses on compliance with the requirements of the four Building Blocks of the Road Management Initiative (RMI) pertaining to Responsibility, Ownership, Financing and Management previously reviewed in the SSATP Working Paper 92 (Progress on Commercialized Road Management in Africa). The second approach is the British Standards Institution’s Publicly Available Specification (PAS55:2008) which recognizes that the management of physical assets is inextricably linked to the management of other assets types, such as Human Assets, Information Assets, Intangible Assets and Financial Assets.

The present Working Paper presents and compares the outcome of the two evaluations. It provides guidance to road sector stakeholders in terms of the differing analytical approaches that may be used to quantitatively evaluate the performance of road agencies. Merging the two approaches as suggested provides the flexibility to adjust performance evaluation to the various levels of performance and capacity of road institutions that can be found in road agencies.

This working paper also strengthens the knowledge and awareness on good road management practices as a foundation for continuous advocacy on road sector reforms.

Pavement maintenance for the road network in Baghdad does not yet have scientific basis such as monitoring and evaluation. This research describes the possibility of implementing Decision Support System (DSS) in pavement maintenance management for evaluating the Asphalt Concrete pavement surface condition. Common types of Asphalt Concrete distresses including (bleeding of Asphalt, various pavement cracking modes, pot holes, longitudinal and transverse deformation) with their various severity and intensity conditions have been included in the data base of the system, mathematical models for calculating the severity and extent for each distress type was also included. The software was developed in Microsoft Visual basic environment using a logic programming process. The pavement condition rating (PCR) of the roadway sections will be determined by the system. The system suggests the required maintenance action based on expected increase in pavement life and on the cost of maintenance alternatives. The system was examined in evaluating the Asphalt pavement surface condition of the freeway leading to Baghdad international Airport. The traditional visual inspection and manual calculation procedure have also been implemented. The surface of the pavement was divided into sections, and the pavement condition was visually evaluated and rated using specially designed forms, the rating was in the range of (26- 93) % which represents "very poor to very good" conditions for the roadway section based on the rating index provided. Data were fed to the developed decision support system software. The results agrees well with that of the developed software. It was concluded that the developed Decision Support System, could assist planner, or policy maker to support decision making in pavement maintenance.

Report describing two ANN-based maintenance decision models developed to recommend current and future pavement maintenance decisions based on MU system and MDM model, respectively. Results of this study reveal that artificial neural network is appropriate for implementation in recommending current and future flexible pavement maintenance decision. This is particularly promising for developing countries where such applications can play an effective role in offsetting the lack of decision tools, which is often apparent.

Urban pavements in developing countries often provide users with low level of services and result in negative impacts on the population and economy. Two main causes of deferring maintenance actions for urban pavements in developing countries were identified: an institutional organization that limits the optimization of resources assigned to urban pavements because current regulations may not be clear on the responsibilities and faculties of agencies in charge of urban pavement management, and; the lack of effective technical-economic tools that may help agencies in the decision-making process as an updated management system adapted to prevailing urban pavements maintenance requirements. Although the current state-of-the-art and the-practice of PMSs presents great developments in the last decade for interurban pavements, effective tools developed for urban pavement management are still a missing part of current practices. Compared with the management of interurban roads, the management of urban pavements is a comprehensive task given the complexity of urban networks, the coordination with various services and the variable traffic demands. Given this scenario for urban pavement management, there is a need for better understanding urban pavements performance for network management. An overall condition index that combines most relevant distresses affecting urban pavements performance is required for network analysis due to several pavement condition indices available were developed for interurban road networks (highways, express corridor, etc.); moreover, several performance models have been developed for particular distresses, and some of them for pavement condition indexes of interurban pavements. Then, their direct application to urban networks (streets, avenues, etc.) is not representative and their adaptability for these conditions requires previous adjustments and calibration. This research was focused on the network level analysis of urban pavements, towards the development of practical and sustainable technical tools to be further integrated into an Urban Pavement Management System (UPMS). The main objective was to calibrate an Urban Pavement Condition Index (UPCI) and Performance Models, technical components required for an UPMS, based on data collected in urban networks in Chile. UPCI for asphalt and concrete pavement, based on objective measures of surface distresses and evaluations of an expert panel was successfully calibrated and validated with a confidence level of 95%. Multilineal regressions were performed to obtain the UPCI models. Three UPCI models were obtained for asphalt pavements with manual and automated data collection. The distresses resulted significance in asphalt pavement condition are fatigue cracking, transverse and reflection cracking, deteriorated patches, rutting, and potholes for manual data collected. IRI replaces potholes in the condition equation for automated data collected. One UPCI model was achieved with successfully validation for concrete pavements with manual data collection. The distresses representative of concrete pavement condition are longitudinal, transversal and oblique cracking, corner breaks, deteriorated patches, faulting, and deteriorate joints and cracks. Deteriorated patches have an important effect in the UPCI value for all UPCIs calibrated, where utility cuts are frequently observed, resulting in low quality patches and high probabilities of premature deterioration. This conclusion supports the primary hypothesis that special condition evaluation guidelines and indicators are required for urban pavements. Distress evaluation guidelines for asphalt and concrete pavements considering manual and automated surveys were developed and satisfactory validated with a 95% of confidence level through repeatability and reproducibility analysis. This guideline proposes an evaluation methodology for the distresses included in the UPCI. Based on the field evaluation carried out during the research, recommendations about the frequency and sampling for pavement condition evaluation are given for different network hierarchies: primary, every 2 year, the complete network; secondary, every 4 year, the complete network, and; local, every four years samples of homogeneous sections. Performance models were performed based on probabilistic trends of UPCI observed during field evaluations for asphalt and concrete pavements. Five field evaluation campaigns were developed in three regions of Chile during a three-year analysis period for the calibration and validation of performance models. The climates included were dry, Mediterranean and humid. The probabilistic trend over time of data collected was analyzed using Markov chains with Monte Carlo simulation that facilitates the analysis of the deterioration trend with only two points of the curve condition over time, allowing the simulation of pavement performance within the timeframe of the research. Fourteen performance models were calibrated for different combination of three climates, two pavement types and three hierarchy networks, considering a pavement life cycle of 25 years. Twelve of them were successfully validated with a confidence level of 95%. The models of asphalt in humid climate and concrete in dry climate need further analysis for their validation, considering more data collection in these climates. Hierarchies based on grouped functional classification were used: Primary Network (Express and Troncal streets), Secondary Network (Colectors and Services) and Local Network (Local and passages). Additionally, a comparative analysis was performed between the real equivalent axles demanding the sections and the equivalent axles admitted by their structures, in sections of Mediterranean climate. In other climates, the data was not enough to perform this analysis. Five models were obtained for asphalt pavement in mediterranean climate: three for the hierarchies and two for the design analysis. The latest two are recommended to use when information about traffic and structure is available. On the contrary, the models developed based on the hierarchy networks are recommended. Two performance models resulted for asphalt pavements in dry and humid climate: Models for humid climate presents higher deterioration rate than model for dry climate. However, both models present a shorter service life than their design. Likewise asphalts, five models were obtained for concrete pavements in mediterranean climate. Considering the models resulted from the analysis of the design, the deterioration trend does not present big differences within the two conditions analyzed. Therefore, for concrete pavements is recommend the use of the models calibrated based on the hierarchy networks. Two models resulted for concrete pavements in dry and humid climate: Both cases present a long service life; however, on the contrary of what is expected, the dry climate presents a deterioration more accelerated than humid climate. This behavior is probably a consequence of differences in construction standards and maintenance policies, noticed in interviews carried out with agencies of both regions. Finally, suitable P&M&R standards for urban pavement based on the urban pavement condition index and their performance models were developed for asphalt and concrete pavements. Three different standards are proposed for primary, secondary and local networks. The practical tools calibrated in this research can be easily implemented and used by local agencies, and simply adaptable over time and to different scenarios. The results of the study were developed with field data collected in Chilean cities; however, the results may be adapted and adopted in other countries for urban pavement management.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a group of techniques that have quite a potential to be applied to pavement engineering and management. In this study, we developed a practical, flexible and out of the box approach to apply genetic algorithms to optimizing the budget allocation and the road maintenance strategy selection for a road network. The aim is to provide an alternative to existing software and better fit the requirements of an important number of pavement managers. To meet the objectives, a new indicator, named Road Global Value Index (RGVI), was created to contemplate the pavement condition, the traffic and the economic and political importance for each and every road section. This paper describes the approach and its components by an example confirming that genetic algorithms are very effective for the intended purpose.

Report from PRIF outlining the three factors need to be addressed if Pacific island countries, in partnership with development partners, are to deliver sustainable infrastructure services. These factors relate to resource constraints, organisational capabilities and incentives. There is no silver bullet that will address all three constraints to asset management. Rather, a range of initiative and reforms are required in order to ensure organisations and governments have adequate incentives, skills, and resources to deliver services. Careful planning of delivering service to local areas, urban and rural, and collaboration among service providers is also required if Pacific island countries are to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

 

The purpose of transportation asset management is to meet life-cycle performance goals (safety, mobility, preservation, economics, and environmental aspects) through the management of physical assets in the most cost-effective manner. Geotechnical asset management can be incorporated into the broader practice of transportation asset management. Currently, most agencies manage geotechnical features on the basis of “worstfirst” conditions, reacting to failures and incurring significant safety, mobility, environmental, and intangible costs. The goal of geotechnical asset management is to implement project planning and selection on the basis of “most-at-risk” for the asset class with consideration of collective and site specific risks throughout the life cycle. Geotechnical features that can affect the performance of a transportation system include retaining walls, unstable slopes, rockfall sites, embankments, and tunnels. These features can be treated as physical assets of the system and managed like other assets of the system. While not every geotechnical feature exists in agency, those that do can be combined into a single asset class to simplify asset management procedures. Although likely on the high end of expectation, some studies indicate a life-cycle cost savings of up to 60 to 80 percent after the implementation of geotechnical asset management. The geotechnical asset management plan should be based on agency performance goals and integrate risk and life-cycle analysis. It is important to note geotechnical asset management will only be successful when all features that create risk are included. Risk management allows for the probability and consequences of events to be evaluated, which is essential for the integration with agency performance goals. Federal Land Management Agencies can implement geotechnical asset management with a relatively modest investment and using existing resources to assess geotechnical features in a multi-tier, risk based approach. There is an agency cost associated with inaction on geotechnical asset management.

The NZTA has been using performance indicator analysis and levels of service reporting for some years to assist with funding allocation, monitoring the application of funds and ensuring these are spent appropriately. Undertaking performance reporting assists in the funding decision process by utilising:

• trend monitoring to show the network ‘health’ of an authority

• benchmarking/relative comparisons with similar networks, as trend monitoring by itself cannot establish the appropriateness of funding levels.

Historical indicators, however, have struggled to give an absolute measure of spending efficiency or network health, ie is the network in good health or at risk. This report presents the outcome of a NZTA research project that included a complete review of the current performance framework. It assessed the limitations to performance measures such as the surface condition index, smooth travel exposure and the pavement integrity index.

It also introduced new performance measures including structural indices, a rutting index, longitudinal profile wave lengths and a failure risk index. The value of the performance framework is demonstrated using a network level example. This report will be of value for all roading asset managers, as it provides a framework for condition performance monitoring that can be applied at both local and national levels.

A primary purpose of a pavement management system (PMS) is to provide information so that roadway  improvements can be priority ranked. Ideally, prioritization is a consistent and justifiable process. It should involve  minimizing life cycle costs subject to minimum levels of serviceability and budget constraints. Prioritization is a  complicated process that requires sound engineering judgment and a good understanding of local conditions.  Current fiscal crises and rising roadway improvement costs have made prioritization decisions more important than  ever. Priority analysis is a systematic process that determines the best ranking list of candidate sections for  maintenance based on specific criteria such as pavement condition, traffic level, pavement functions, etc. Various  methods are used for priority analysis ranging from simple listing based on engineering judgment to true  optimization based on mathematical formulations.

This paper examines theoretical and pragmatic problems surrounding the prioritization process. This study report a detailed review of various prioritization techniques and models developed for flexible pavements at global  level. This will help in evaluating the usefulness of the various models in some particular condition having the  similar prioritization parameters. A discussion on the limitations of the different models is also given in this study.

MIRAVEC Report D5.1.  This is a report of the findings in Work Package 4 (WP4) in MIRAVEC. The objectives of this WP are to: - Identify the current role of road vehicle energy consumption and CO2 emissions in existing pavement/asset management systems and opportunities for its improvement, - Analyse potential implications of optimizing for low energy consumption for other objectives, - Give recommendations on implementation of road vehicle energy consumption (CO2 emissions) in existing pavement/asset management systems. 

ACRP Report 69. This report provides a primer and guidebook for airport managers and staff on asset and

infrastructure management applicable to all areas of the operation of an airport. The report begins with a primer for executive-level staff. The primer offers an overview of an asset and infrastructure management program and the benefits and costs of implementation. The guidebook provides examples from various airports and is designed to be a reference for integrating proven asset and infrastructure management practices and techniques, at airports of all sizes. The guidebook defines an asset and infrastructure management program and its components and how a program relates to daily operations and longer term planning. In addition, a PowerPoint presentation, which can be used to present the benefits of a program to stakeholders, is available on the TRB website and can be found by searching on the title of the report.

The Kingdom of Tonga’s road network, comprising approximately 640km of public roads, has had minimal road maintenance over the past decade. As a result, the road network is rapidly deteriorating. The World Bank funded Transport Sector Consolidation Project is supporting the Government of Tonga in implementing a road maintenance program to prolong the serviceability of the road network. However, due to the limited capacity of the local contracting industry, and a severe lack of quality road surfacing aggregate, traditional surfacing methods for periodic maintenance and road upgrading are not suitable. Innovative surfacing technologies, such as Otta Seals, were adopted to overcome the local limitations. The main objective of this paper is to document the introduction of Otta Seals to Tonga and the experience to date. It will also briefly capture the applications, benefits and limitations of Otta Seals, and the reasons why they have been considered for Tonga. The paper provides a brief review of the local contracting industry and the availability of locally sourced aggregate in Tonga, and the effects that these have on the choice of pavement surfacing alternatives. The first trial sections were awarded to a local contractor in January 2012, and the works were started after the rainy season in July 2012. The process of introducing the new technology has to date been successful and progress of this project is being monitored by a number of other South Pacific countries that are faced with the similar constraints.

Asset management is an issue which is implicated in several sectors of a national economy in Slovakia. Competition, regulations and new conditions on the open European market require from the road agencies to solve the issues connected with the effectiveness of the rejuvenation and management at a high rate obtained assets.

 

The regional road administrators struggle with the volume of roads in their sphere of authority and limited budget to secure a functioning rural road network. Without an asset management system a lots of funds flow in wrong assets while on the other side lots of socio-economic benefits are lost due to poor condition of other assets. That combined with the request that their maintenance plans have to meet the requirements of sustainability principles led to a design of a working improvised asset management system to fulfil the role of a proper asset management system.

Report describing issues associated optimization of road maintenance.

Paper on road asset management in Slovakia.

This research was undertaken between July 2008 and May 2011 and brings together findings from a review of literature and a survey of New Zealand bridge asset management practices. The review and the survey identified that the type of data that is collected for bridges have to be improved if advanced bridge asset management is to be adopted. Also, techniques of data collection have to change to ensure data reliability.

To achieve these goals, a strategy is proposed that defines the data to be collected (inventory, cost, performance, safety and environmental, and risk) and how the data should be managed. The strategy also recommends changes to current New Zealand data collection practices, including improvements to the visual inspection regime, adoption of non-destructive evaluation and structural health monitoring, adoption of benchmarking data collection, implementation of condition rating, and improved inspector training courses.

The strategy also acknowledges that not all networks have the same requirements. A risk- and criticality-based approach is therefore promoted and outlined. The risk and criticality approach allows bridge asset managers to have flexibility to mould the strategy to their own needs and to maintain a cost-neutral data collection programme.

In many practices of bridge asset management, life cycle costs are estimated by statistical deterioration prediction models based upon monitoring data collected through inspection activities. In many applications, it is, however, often the case that the validity of statistical deterioration prediction models is flawed by an inadequate stock of inspection dates. In this paper, a systematic methodology is presented to provide estimates of the deterioration process for bridge managers based upon empirical judgments at early stages by experts, and whereby revisions may be made as new data are obtained through later inspections. More concretely, Bayesian estimation methodology is developed to improve the estimation of Markov transition probability of the multi-stage exponential Markov model by Markov chain Monte Carlo method using Gibbs sampling. The paper concludes with an empirical example, using the real world monitoring data, to demonstrate the applicability of the model and its Bayesian estimation method in the case of incomplete monitoring data.

Maintaining roads is rarely seen as important.  It attracts neither the funding nor the expertise that in highway agencies around the world gravitate to big new construction projects.  And yet, prolonged neglect of maintenance can become costly and disruptive not only for road agencies, which have to spend more to rebuild roads once they have begun to fall apart, but also for road users, who suffer discomfort, slower speeds, and higher vehicle wear and tear on bad roads. 

As a major lender and source of technical guidance to highway agencies in developing countries, the World Bank has long struggled to help client road maintenance departments –who widely lack institutional capacity—to design, fund and implement road maintenance efforts that are timely and run a minimal risk of corruption.  In 1988 the Bank published a policy paper on this subject that drew attention to the alarming magnitude of the problem in developing countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, and recommended a new approach for tackling the endemic institutional weaknesses it identified. 

Now members of the same team that wrote that policy paper more than two decades ago take a fresh look at the age-old problem.  They examine how far the prescriptions offered then are still valid today, and to what extent recent developments warrant a rethinking of the recommended approach.  Key findings are that the core logic favoring outsourcing to contractors still holds, to create improved incentives and managerial flexibility supporting minimization of total life-cycle costs.  However, contract structure, risk allocation, duration, and governance environment can greatly affect performance.  Longer-term contracts can be structured to reward sustained performance and facilitate the requisite funding, but vigilance against corruption is a constant requirement.  Modern information and communications technologies offer much promise in supporting greater transparency and accountability.  Ultimately, the commitment of the nation’s leaders, public and private, to the integrity of the systems will remain a fundamental determinant of their effectiveness—and the condition of the nation’s roads.

Presentation by Cesar Queiroz on asset management.

This thesis proposes an improved methodology of incorporating priority preferences into pavement maintenance programming to overcome these problems. Instead of applying priority weights directly into the mathematical formulation of maintenance programming, priority preferences are handled in two stages of post-processing of the optimal programming process, namely a tie-breaking analysis and a trade-off analysis. The optimal programming problem is first solved without applying priority weights to any parameters of the problem. This ensures that the optimality of the solution is not disturbed. In the tie-breaking post-processing, prioritized maintenance activities are identified to replace lower priority activities in the solution, without affecting the optimality of the solution. Finally, a trade-off analysis is performed to introduce more prioritized activities into the solution based on the willingness of the highway agency to accept some loss in optimality. The entire framework is clearly illustrated using examples.

Excellent PhD dissertation on optimization techniques for pavement management systems.

This paper explained the derivation of two composite condition indices used in New Zealand. The first is the RDI, which was developed to give an indication of surface condition (health) on the network. The second is the SII, which was developed for the primary purpose of triggering resurface actions in the long term maintenance planning and pavement prediction system implemented in NZ.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of infrastructure quality on bicycle operating costs in order to develop improved tools for including these costs in appraisal of transport projects.

Working Paper No. 2 which consists of (i) the slides for a keynote presentation by Ricardo Halperin at an International Conference on Road Financing that was organized by the Russian Federal Highway Administration, with the support of the ECA Infrastructure Department, in Moscow in November 1998; and (ii) a background paper, prepared by Patrick Malone, assembling underlying case material.

TWU-37 Discussion paper analyzes several cases of road decentralization in selected countries, in order to draw lessons of experience, and examine these in the Bolivian context. The analysis in this study is restricted to the road sector and does not include any evaluation of general aspects of decentralization such as political, economic and administrative or of democratic participation.

Powerpoint presentation on contractual models for performance based contracts.

Presentation by Dr J Dunlop discussing operating procedures and systems for Transit NZ.

By Andreas Schliesser and Alberto Bull, this book puts forward a number of principles that would improve the management and operation of road networks. The calculation of Asset Value is particularly interesting.