Pavement distress evaluation for road networks of Saudi Arabia

The Research Institute of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia has been actively engaged in research towards developing a suitable system for evaluating road pavements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with an ultimate objective of developing a cost-effective pavement maintenance management system for this region. This paper describes the procedure proposed for pavement distress evaluation for road networks of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The proposed procedure identifies various distress types and categorizes them according to their severity and extent. Deduct points are assigned to each distress type and finally a Pavement Distress-Based Rating (PDR) is determined for each analysis section/subsection. The PDR describes the overall distress condition of a section/subsection and hence its priority for maintenance. Maintenance strategies for various distress types are also suggested. Data storage and analyses are conducted by a microcomputer program using dBase III Plus software (A).