Development of a Structural Asset Management System for Urban Pavements

The City of Saskatoon’s current pavement management system relies solely on surface condition data from manual and automated ratings to assign treatment without incorporating structural capacity or load spectra directly into the management decision making process. The current system employs generic performance models for various classes of roads, not taking into account road usage or specific field state conditions on a segment by segment basis. Overlooking road segment structural condition and applied load spectra has been identified as a primary limitation to accurately estimating the service life of urban road segments, especially under current field state conditions of significant growth in commercial truck traffic experienced in Saskatoon. The potential danger of this management process is invariably applying treatments far too late for their benefits to be optimized, particularly to preserve structural integrity of the road assets. The objective of this research was to investigate non-destructive ground penetrating radar and falling weight deflection measurements to assess the structural asset value of various road classes within the City of Saskatoon road network. This research demonstrates that structural asset measurements can be incorporated into the asset management system employed by the City of Saskatoon to accurately assess pavement structural condition across the city’s diverse road network. This research also demonstrates that the incorporation of structural measures can improve the accuracy of the empirical based performance prediction models currently used. Key Words: structural asset management, ground penetrating radar, falling weight deflection