One of the Long-Term Pavement Performance program objectives is "to determine the effects of loading, environment, material properties and variability, construction quality, and maintenance levels on pavement distress and performance." This volume reports the results of early sensitivity analyses on the National Information Management System to determine the effects of loading, pavement structure, environment, and material properties on pavement performance. In order to conduct the sensitivity analyses, it was first necessary to develop statistically linear regression equations to predict the occurrence of distresses. Once a predictive equation was available, the effects of variations in significant independent variables were quantified by calculating the change in the predicted distress as each significant variable was varied from one standard deviation above its mean to one standard deviation below its mean, with all other variables held at their mean values. The sensitivities of the distress predictions to the individual variations in the significant variables were then plotted to display the relative significance of the independent variables in the equation to the prediction of the distress. The primary products of these studies are increased understanding of the relative effects of these parameters on the occurrence of distress and the predictive equations themselves. While it is believed that these products will prove useful in the interim, the reliability of the results are limited at this point in time. The products are expected to be greatly improved through later analyses when more time sequence data are available. (Author/publisher)
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