This document is a synthesis of the information collected in 2003 on highway community practice and research and development efforts in the automated collection and processing of pavement condition data typically used in network-level pavement management. The scope of the effort covered all phases of automated pavement condition data collection and processing for pavement surface distress, pavement ride quality, rut-depth measurements, and joint-faulting measurements. Included in the scope were the technologies employed, contracting issues, quality assurance (QA) issues, costs and benefits of automated techniques, monitoring frequencies and sampling protocols in use, degree of adoption of national standards for data collection, and contrast between the state of the art and the state of the practice in automated data collection and processing. Although emphasis was on network-level pavement management, project-level or research-level work, such as the Long-Term Pavement Performance Program, was included where it was helpful in contributing to the knowledge base on the subject matter. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.trb.org/publications/nchrp/nchrp_syn_334.pdf
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