Pavement Condition Data Integrity Quality Assurance Using an Information Management Approach

Abstract

Highway agencies are collecting an enormous amount of pavement condition data and have to face constantly the laborious task of ensuring its completeness and accuracy. Traditionally, most data-quality studies are focused on ensuring the accuracy and precision of delivered pavement condition data and little attention has been paid to ensure that the data is of high integrity. This paper proposes the use of information management concepts to investigate the integrity of a delivered pavement condition database. A set of performance metrics is developed to assess data integrity from both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. Using these metrics, a quality assurance framework is proposed to test for data integrity before accepting the database for use in the pavement management system. Through the use of a case study, the applicability of the developed quality assurance procedure is demonstrated.