State highway agencies develop a set of intervention levels for pavement preservation treatment selection. Traditionally, intervention levels for specific project sites are based on measurements of pavement roughness, rutting on asphalt pavements, faulting on PCC pavements and pavement surface distresses. Pavement condition ratings (PCR), representing the overall condition of pavement surfaces, are often used as a means to trigger pavementtreatments at the network level. However, PCR may not be suitable for triggering preservation and maintenance treatments which tend to be distress-specific. With improved automated pavement data collection technologies, it is now possible for agencies to collect network-level distress data reliably, making it possible to develop distress specific intervention levels for system-wide pavement treatments. This paper considers two different procedures to develop such intervention levels: historical practices and decision matrices obtained from expert opinions. Using Indiana's data, it wasobserved that both procedures yield intervention levels that are consistent with commonly-used values available in the literature. The advantages and drawbacks of each procedure are discussed. Distress-based decision matrices using expert opinions are better suited for implementation within a statewide pavement management system compared to intervention levels based on historical practices, especially for new and innovative treatments where sufficient data for analysis may not be available.
Abstract