Development of Pavement Management System for
Municipality Roads, Saudi
Arabia
Hamad I. Al-Abdul Wahhab, Rezqallah H. Ramadhan
And Ibrahim M. Asi
First Guff Conference on Roads - Kuwait 11 -13 March 2002
Abstract:
Simple engineering judgment was the only procedure followed by Dammam
Municipality engineers
for pavement evaluation and maintenance prioritization. By the end of 1997, the
General Directorate for Operation and Maintenance decided to adapt an
objective, systematic, and scientific evaluation procedure of their pavement
network and to efficiently allocate the available limited funds to maximize
their benefits. Therefore, they decided to develop a pavement management system
(PMS). A methodology was developed to integrate different subsystems into a
rational systematic pavement management system for Dammam Municipality
road network, Saudi Arabia.
These subsystems are (i) pavement features coding,
(ii) visual pavement evaluation, (iii) equipment-based pavement evaluation, (iv) maintenance and repair strategy selection, (v)
maintenance priority ranking, (vi) pavement condition prediction, and (vii)
reporting. These subsystems were all integrated to form the Dammam Municipality Pavement Management System
(DMPMS). The system is a customized computer software
that is a knowledge-based Visual Basic Windows application. It has been
designed to provide an easy-to use PC product. It is a completely interactive
menu-driven error-checking application, which is supplemented by a full active
self-explanatory help facility. The DMPMS was tested and implemented for Dammam road network. The implementation activities included
a review and evaluation of data collection procedures and a development of
distress manifestation manual, preparation of the software documentation, and Dammam
Municipality personnel
hands-on training. It is hoped that the developed system will improve pavement
performance and yield significant savings in pavement maintenance in the long
term.