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.