The Spanish Ministry of Public Works manages the Spanish national road network, which consists of about 25,000 km. In 1992, the average age of the pavement was of 7.2 years, whereas at the present time it has increased to9 years. The great heterogeneity of the road elements, the constant increase of the length to be maintained and its gradual aging require considerable budgets but also agile models of technical, economic and administrative management. This communication presents the actual state of the management that consists in an integrated database system that includes many parameters both about the technical values of the road and the administrative follow-up of the actions done on it. It is connected to various models of pavement evolution that allows the managers to predict the future state of the roads in any parameter, and then to choose or to establish a maintenance policy. Finally, the management system calculates the maintenance plan,detailing which actions are to be done in each section in a multi-year scenario, so that the investment and the road quality is optimised. The management system software combines analytical formula based on traditional databases with geographical information (GIS), which is not only used for representing the results but also as part of the forecast and optimisation models, for which the recent technology of "dynamic segments" has been used. Attention has been paid to conciliate the operational organisation of maintenance works with the fact that optimal needs for each road section; inother words, the heterogeneity of the parameters (as some are measured every 20 cm) would imply that actions of different kind were done in very short sections and not in the same year, so the management system evaluates the need to harmonise the action plan in order to make it feasible and economical. The article starts with an analysis of other management systems that exist in the world. Then it describes the Spanish situation and justifies which need for a management system for its national road network. The body of the article covers the description of the functionalities and technical and economical design assumptions of this new system. Finally, the conclusions present some future evolutions for the Spanish management systems as well as the possibility to generalise its use to other road networks, either for pavement or other assets. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Abstract