As transport modes, systems and usage continues to evolve rapidly, road authorities must work to optimize their road networks, reducing accidents, congestion, noise and pollution, and maintain high-quality infrastructure, in response to rising user expectations of network availability, performance, safety and security. And do it all with increasingly limited resources.
Furthermore, they need to ensure that the infrastructure they provide is equipped to adapt to the use and demands of emerging, smart technologies, such as Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), electric car charging, energy generation and harvesting, in-vehicle sensors, and data communication management for route and condition optimization.
In response to these new pressures, the industry must find new ways to provide smarter, better and increased services for less, generating value from innovative materials, technologies, and industry approaches, especially in the performance and management of road pavement infrastructure.
Securing the best-possible return
The international standard for asset management ISO 55000 provides a strategic framework to support organisations in generating the “best possible net return from assets”, while also reducing costs. Drawing on this standard, as well as our pavement management expertise and work with clients, here are four key ways in which asset owners can incorporate smarter technologies into their asset management plans and systems — leveraging whole life costs, improving performance and minimising risks.
1/ Ensuring healthier, safer road pavements
As a result of traffic loading and environmental variations, pavements deteriorate with time and rehabilitation is required to maintain serviceability throughout their life. Typically, the condition of road pavements is monitored using visual inspection and annual surveys to assess surface defects, skid resistance and bearing capacity. This approach is reactive, however, highlighting visible surface defects rather than predicting deterioration to aid maintenance planning.
Digital tools offer road authorities the opportunity to transform the process and implement digital health monitoring of the whole pavement system. Using a combination of smart pavement sensors, machine surveys and in-vehicle technologies, it’s possible to develop a system that enables real-time measurement of stresses and strains, temperature and moisture to generate continuous, remote data that can be compared with the material thresholds for planning maintenance.
For authorities, this kind of system can improve lifecycle management and reduce the risks of pavement failure, preventing the unexpected repairs and subsequent traffic delays that negatively impact on an authority’s costs and reputation.
