Document Library

The fourteenth installment in the pavement preservation checklist series, focusing on the procedure for fabric interlayer application.

Determining an appropriate set of performance measures to use for managing the nation's highway network is a vital component of the work to preserve our existing transportation infrastructure. Recent research, such as National Cooperative Research Program (NCHRP) Project 20-74 describing an asset management framework for the Interstate Highway System (IHS), has highlighted the importance of establishing a consistent set of performance measures for communicating physical conditions of our roads, bridges, and other highway assets. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Asset Management developed this project to analyze bridge and pavement data across a multi-state corridor, evaluate the quality of existing performance measures, and recommend additional measures as well as further avenues of research in this area. A key deliverable involved using the Integrated Corridor Analysis Tool (ICAT), previously developed by the I-95 Corridor Coalition, as a platform to display bridge and pavement performance data. ICAT provides a map-based application, accessible via the Internet, that allows users to view, analyze, and compare performance data along an entire corridor or at a specific location. This project provides a statistical analysis of bridge and pavement data received from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. This analysis included looking at individual values as well as comparing values both within a state and across states.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sponsored the development of a Pavement Management Roadmap to help identify the steps needed to address current gaps in pavement management and to establish research and development initiatives and priorities. This document presents an overview of the 10-year Pavement Management Roadmap, which can be used to guide new research, development, and technology transfer opportunities that will lead to improved approaches to pavement management. The roadmap was intended from the beginning to be a collaborative process that would involve representatives from each of the various stakeholder groups that either use pavement management data, support the use of pavement management concepts, or provide technical assistance or training to current or future pavement management practitioners. The contents of this roadmap were derived from a series of stakeholder workshops in which representatives from state and local agencies, academia, private industry (including data collection and software vendors), FHWA, and others met to discuss and prioritize the needs of pavement management professionals. The resulting needs were organized and grouped into one of the following four themes that emerged from the process: Theme 1: Use of Existing Tools and Technology; Theme 2: Institutional and Organizational Issues; Theme 3: The Broad Role of Pavement Management; and Theme 4: New Tools, Methodologies, and Technology. The executive summary to this report is published as a stand alone document, entitled Pavement Management Roadmap - Executive Summary (FHWA-HIF-11-014).

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sponsored the development of a Pavement Management Roadmap to help identify the steps needed to address current gaps in pavement management and to establish research and development initiatives and priorities. This is the executive summary of the final report entitled Pavement Management Roadmap (FHWA-HIF-11-011). This document presents an overview of the 10-year Pavement Management Roadmap, which can be used to guide new research, development, and technology transfer opportunities that will lead to improved approaches to pavement management. The roadmap was intended from the beginning to be a collaborative process that would involve representatives from each of the various stakeholder groups that either use pavement management data, support the use of pavement management concepts, or provide technical assistance or training to current or future pavement management practitioners. The contents of this roadmap were derived from a series of stakeholder workshops in which representatives from state and local agencies, academia, private industry (including data collection and software vendors), FHWA, and others met to discuss and prioritize the needs of pavement management professionals. The resulting needs were organized and grouped into one of the following four themes that emerged from the process: Theme 1: Use of Existing Tools and Technology; Theme 2: Institutional and Organizational Issues; Theme 3: The Broad Role of Pavement Management; and Theme 4: New Tools, Methodologies, and Technology.

The pavement preservation philosophy has seen increased adoption in State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) across the United States as a result of the successful educational and outreach programs instituted by FHWA and other pavement preservation organizations over the past decade. The fact remains that the effectiveness of pavement preservation activities has not been well documented or publicized throughout the United States. Intuitively for pavement professionals the philosophy makes perfect sense, however, hard facts supporting this stance are still elusive except for anecdotal examples. The objective of this study was to conduct a synthesis to highlight the degree to which pavement preservation treatments (including minor rehabilitation treatments) extend the service life of pavements with or without adding strength. This study was carried out by conducting a study of six target states that were known to perform, collectively, the totality of all treatments under consideration. The results of this study are summarized in a series of tables documenting the data provided by the states. A summary of each treatment’s performance is also contained in this report. A series of observations, conclusions, and recommendations are also included. The findings of this activity will be used to provide support for FHWA policy guidance related to pavement maintenance and minor rehabilitation, commonly referred to as pavement preservation.

This report presents a potential framework for a National Bridge Maintenance Database (NBMD). This framework provides a uniform format for collecting, reporting, and storing information on bridge maintenance actions. Use of this framework will promote compatibility of maintenance data reported by different agencies and will provide an effective means for using these data in evaluating cost and performance of alternative maintenance applications or as a basis for cost-benefit analysis and evaluation of cost and deterioration models. The material contained in the report should be of immediate interest to state bridge and maintenance engineers and others concerned with the maintenance and management of bridges.

Bridge Engineering 2010 consists of three volumes. This volume, Volume 3, includes 18 papers concerned with the following areas: (1) bridge foundations; (2) concrete bridge decks; (3) assessment and evaluation of bridge extreme events (i.e., explosions, wave loading, and earthquakes); (4) bridge management; and (5) bridge seismic analysis.

The nation is facing enormous repair, maintenance, and replacement costs for its aging bridge infrastructure, and this issue is of concern to a broad cross section of public and private interests. A simple-to-use bridge information system is needed by technical and nontechnical users who would like to review detailed information on the condition of the nation's public bridges without recourse to access-restricted and cost-prohibitive proprietary software. The annual National Bridge Inventory (NBI) text files collected from the states over consecutive years and maintained by FHWA constitute a wealth of information on approximately 600,000 public bridges throughout the United States, including information on condition and load ratings, geometry, sufficiency, age, location, functional classification, average daily traffic, improvement costs, inspection frequency, material and design types, historical significance, structural deficiency, and functional obsolescence. This information is of potential significance to a wide variety of end users, including bridge design and maintenance personnel, departments of transportation executive management, cultural and environmental specialists, economic forecasting and financial personnel, and media, commercial interest, and public information officers. As a supplement to a proprietary bridge management system, the New Mexico Department of Transportation developed an independent bridge information software application to process NBI source files and to produce commonly requested formatted reports on various categories of bridge information, including structural deficiency, age, improvement costs, historical significance, and several others. Because the NBI text files are processed into a common database format, custom reports may be easily generated by using simple query tools.

This report presents a level-of-service-based approach to describing performance of Interstate Highway System (IHS) assets. It also provides a template and process that state departments of transportation (DOTs) can use to implement this approach for managing their IHS assets. Well-described levels of service are an effective means for communicating with public officials, highway users, and other stakeholders about asset performance and resources needed to ensure adequate performance. The IHS, the result of a major national investment, is vital to the nation's economy and an increasingly critical contributor to global production and distribution systems, but the system's assets are owned and managed by the states. While the specific measures that define excellent or poor levels of service may vary from one state to another, a consistent framework and measures for IHS levels of service would support benchmarks that DOTs and other responsible agencies can use to assess their Interstate maintenance and preservation needs and management their IHS assets.

The 2010 Road Asset Management Plan (RAMP) reviews the Shetland Island Council’s current status of asset management practices and describes a review process that will take place to update the results of the document on a continuous cycle.

An update to the 2005 Data Integration Primer. The Data Integration Primer aims to provide the basic arguments for data integration, along with a framework for understanding and making the decisions necessary to select a data integration strategy that will work most effectively for your organization.

A report that investigates the role of structural health monitoring in the optimization of bridge management under budget constraints.