From Road Condition Data Collection to Effective Maintenance Decision Making: Saskatchewan Highways and Transportation Approach

An effective road maintenance program requires that road authorities strategically target their investment to those roads that provide most benefits in return. The main goal is to determine maintenance strategies that minimize the long-term costs of preserving the road network in a desired condition. This process begins by obtaining adequate information about the road network being analyzed so that the right decisions can be made at the right time. Saskatchewan Highways and Transportation (SHT) collects various road condition data either by using an automated data collection system or by manually rating the road network. The SHT automated data collection system consists of the longitudinal profiling subsystem, transverse profiling subsystem and digital video distress collection subsystem. Collected road condition data are then post processed and stored in the centralized database to be later analyzed in the SHT Asset Management System (AMS) that is concerned with optimizing available funding and providing most benefits for the entire road network. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the road condition data collection process in Saskatchewa