Overview
Maintenance of paved roads is carried out to preserve and improve the pavement and reduce the deterioration process. A treatment will make the pavement last for a certain time interval before next treatment is necessary. The time for which a treatment lasts can be related to many factors such as condition before treatment, selected treatment method, maintenance strategies (and changes in the strategy), technical quality, changes in traffic flow and budget levels.
Innovations brought by ToolBox will include new functional triggers that ensure that road user expectations are considered in the selection of maintenance candidates, which in turn form the basis for the selection of project/schemes/object lengths to be maintained. As a further benefit the functional triggers could be used as benchmark indicators for a European road condition demonstration.
Pavement managers’ deal with complex decisions when identifying lengths of their networks in need of maintenance, and planning the appropriate maintenance treatments. Currently, they are heavily dependent on experience, even though many support systems exist, such as guidelines, monitoring and information systems. Decades of road network monitoring and follow up projects, such as LTPP (Long Term Pavement Performance), have generated a huge volume of empirical data on pavement condition, giving knowledge how this develops and affects road users, which can be made useful if analysed in a structured and sound manner. To complement this information, several decades of research and development has accumulated a substantial volume of knowledge, models and tools. This can be used to assist in maintenance decisions, with an aim to assist in applying a strategy that delivers a sound road network with minimum cost. Even so, these support tools are not yet implemented to their full potential, and most tools do not address user expectations.
This project aims to advance the development and implementation of practical strategies and tools to assist road authorities in optimising the maintenance of their road networks, whilst addressing the key interests and expectations of road users.
ToolBox will develop a “concept for proper maintenance planning” to assure the selection of adequate maintenance works to make effective use of the maintenance budget, based on available road condition data, to give minimal negative effects on road users, safety for road workers and the environment. The main idea is to develop a tool for maintenance planning which allows selection of sections in need of maintenance based on not only cost and benefit analysis but also road users’ expectations.
ToolBox will deliver a framework for tools that help road owners to decide how lengths should be identified for maintenance (using available condition data), balancing costs and road user expectations.
Results
ToolBox is a work done in the subject Design - Rapid and Durable Maintenance Methods and Techniques that aims to advance the development and implementation of practical strategies and tools to assist road authorities in optimising the maintenance of their road networks, whilst addressing the key interests and expectations of road users.
The ToolBox concept is applicable in the selection of lengths for maintenance (candidates), linked to comfort, safety, durability and the environment, including how the data is used, combined and weighted within current decision tools and models. ToolBox has not developed new models, for the technical parameters that are not currently measured (e.g. fuel consumption) but identified and extracted key tools from existing models used in Europe. The work has considered and developed an understanding of how existing knowledge (data) should be used to account for road user expectations in the selection of object lengths for maintenance. These existing and new concepts have been used to establish a set of functional triggers for selecting lengths (candidates) for maintenance on the network that include road user expectations and combine them to make recommended prioritised treatment objects. The principle process is Condition DataTriggers (models) Weighting, thresholds Combined IndexSchemes—Network Statistics including candidates.
ToolBox have demonstrated the application of the concepts developed within the project via a prototype tool applied to sample test networks, to compare and contrast the approach proposed by the ToolBox tool with the approach proposed by current systems. The tool is implemented within an Excel sheet and has been demonstrated on data from road networks of the partners. Partners in ToolBox have been VTI (Coordinator) Sweden, TRL UK, AIT Austria, CETE France and WSP group Sweden. Five reports including this has been produced.