Over the past three decades, most highway agencies have adopted Pavement Management Systems (PMS) to help manage their pavement networks more cost-effectively. One of the most costly parts of operating a PMS relates to collecting network-level pavement condition information and, as a result, agencies are faced with developing procedures and guidelines for quality management of these activities. The quality of collected data has a direct impact on the utility of, and confidence in the PMS, which in turn has an effect on the use of scarce resources for preserving highway networks. However, until recently there was little attention given to the quality and consistency of collected data. The Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program, in conjunction with advances in automated methods of collecting many types of pavement condition data, focused new attention on the topic ofpavement condition data quality management. This attention on quality management has led some agencies to develop methods and practices to ensure the appropriateness of the collected data for use in their respective PMS, but these practices are far from universal and many agencies lack a formalized data collection quality management plan. The objective of this paperis to summarize current quality management practices being employed by public road and highway agencies for both automated and manual pavement condition data collection using information collected in a recent survey of 55highway agencies throughout the United States and Canada.
Samenvatting