Pavement management system
Encyclopedia
Pavement management system or PMS is a term that relates to a system that utilizes the condition coding of roadways coupled with the identification of strategies to determine maintenance or re-construction activities. The definition for pavement management system
is "a system which involves the identification of optimum strategies at various management levels and maintains pavements at an adequate level of serviceability. These include, but are not limited to, systematic procedures for scheduling maintenance and rehabilitation activities based on optimization of benefits and minimization of costs."
Typical tasks performed by pavement management systems include:
Research has shown that it is far less expensive to keep a road in good condition than it is to repair it once it has deteriorated. This is why pavement management systems place the priority on preventive maintenance of roads in good condition, rather than reconstructing roads in poor condition. In terms of lifetime cost and long term pavement conditions, this will result in better system performance. Agencies that concentrate on restoring their bad roads often find that by the time they've repaired them all, the roads that were in good condition have deteriorated.
A pavement management system is a planning tool that is able to model pavement and surface deterioration due to the effects of traffic and environmental ageing, and contains a series of decision units used to determine how and when to repair the roads surface based on various tests. These tests can be simply visual or employ special software and databases to provide rankings for roads or road sections. "The State of California
was among the first to adopt a (PMS) in 1979. Like others of its era, the first PMS was based in a mainframe computer and contained provisions for an extensive database. It can be used to determine long-term maintenance funding requirements and to examine the consequences on network condition if insufficient funding is available.
Pavement management systems are now used in all 50 states as well as other countries worldwide in order to efficiently manage the maintenance of paved roadway surfaces.
Management system
A management system is the framework of processes and procedures used to ensure that an organization can fulfill all tasks required to achieve its objectives....
is "a system which involves the identification of optimum strategies at various management levels and maintains pavements at an adequate level of serviceability. These include, but are not limited to, systematic procedures for scheduling maintenance and rehabilitation activities based on optimization of benefits and minimization of costs."
Typical tasks performed by pavement management systems include:
- Inventory pavement conditions, identifying good, fair and poor pavements.
- Assign importance ratings for road segments, based on traffic volumes, road functional class, and community demand.
- Schedule maintenance of good roads to keep them in good condition.
- Schedule repairs of poor and fair pavements as remaining available funding allows.
Research has shown that it is far less expensive to keep a road in good condition than it is to repair it once it has deteriorated. This is why pavement management systems place the priority on preventive maintenance of roads in good condition, rather than reconstructing roads in poor condition. In terms of lifetime cost and long term pavement conditions, this will result in better system performance. Agencies that concentrate on restoring their bad roads often find that by the time they've repaired them all, the roads that were in good condition have deteriorated.
A pavement management system is a planning tool that is able to model pavement and surface deterioration due to the effects of traffic and environmental ageing, and contains a series of decision units used to determine how and when to repair the roads surface based on various tests. These tests can be simply visual or employ special software and databases to provide rankings for roads or road sections. "The State of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
was among the first to adopt a (PMS) in 1979. Like others of its era, the first PMS was based in a mainframe computer and contained provisions for an extensive database. It can be used to determine long-term maintenance funding requirements and to examine the consequences on network condition if insufficient funding is available.
Pavement management systems are now used in all 50 states as well as other countries worldwide in order to efficiently manage the maintenance of paved roadway surfaces.