Abstract

Implementation of a pavement management system requires data collection to estimate system needs, performance modeling to forecast time sensitive changes and decision making to allocate interventions. Many agencies have embarked into the implementation of a pavement management system which eventually after some years render its fruits, however, implementation typically involves expensive equipment, years of data collection and hundreds of hours of workmanship. This all result in a barrier that impedes implementation at small municipalities and governments in developing countries. A low cost solution to estimate road surface roughness condition and to implement an initial pavement management system is proposed in this research. Pavement roughness can be estimated with an accelerometer built-in tablets and smart phones. Vertical accelerations normalized by speed can be used to produce a proxy for International Roughness Index. Testing of the method was done by comparing different tablets, applications, vehicles, speeds and location of the instrument inside the vehicle. Performance models were developed using World Bank’s equation of IRI, road repair strategies were correlated to testing sections in need of maintenance or rehabilitation repairs. This research shows a case study of the town of Saint-Michelle in Quebec. Data was collected for all municipal roads in Saint Michelle and a pavement management system was developed. It was found that $254,418 dollars is required in order to sustain current levels of condition. It is recommended that in the future performance models are based on several years of observations in order to replace the synthetic deterministic curves herein adopted.