In recent years, efforts have been directed towards automating condition survey procedures by use of advanced imaging technology. Several devices that use advanced video imaging technology have been developed and are being considered for adoption by many highway agencies. However, in any distress measuring device there always exist some measurement errors. A new automated distress measuring device, PAS 1, developed by Pavedex Inc., is described, and a valid statistical decision making framework is applied for its evaluation using the field data. The basic underlying sampling distribution is assumed to be a t distribution, and various statistical hypothesis test results are presented. On the basis of the limited set of condition survey data, conclusions on the accuracy, precision, repeatability, and compatibility of the automated distress measuring device are obtained. The accuracy was measured against the hand-mapped data, and the compatibility was measured against the manual subjective condition survey data. The necessary considerations for switching from the manual condition survey procedure to an objective automated distress measuring device are addressed.
Abstract