Calibration and Validation of a Condition Indicator for Managing Urban Pavement Networks

Abstract

Deterioration indices that may combine different types of surface distresses, serviceability and structural indicators are commonly used for pavement management at network level. These indices differ in the types of deterioration and criteria considered to quantify severity and density of distresses. Most of these indices were developed for interurban road networks; therefore, their application to urban networks is complex and not representative. For this reason, there is a need of understanding better the urban pavement behavior in order to collect the distresses relevant for these types of pavements; and based on this, develop an overall condition index for urban pavements that represents the mix of the more relevant distresses for the use in network analysis. The main objective of this study was to calibrate and validate an Urban Pavement Condition Index (UPCI) representative of the overall condition of these pavements, based on objective measures of surface distresses and evaluations of an expert panel. The study is part of a three year project developed in Chile “Research and Development of Solutions for Urban Pavement Management in Chile”. The scope of this study included the development of distress evaluation guidelines for asphalt and concrete pavements considering manual and automated surveys, the application of these guidelines in different types of urban networks and the assessment of these networks by an expert panel. Finally, three UPCI equations were obtained with satisfactory validation for asphalt pavement with manual and automated data collection, and for concrete pavements with manual data collection.