Automated Pavement Distress Collection Techniques

This report documents highway community practice and research and development efforts in the automated collection and processing of pavement condition data techniques typically used in network-level pavement management. The scope of the study covered all phases of automated pavement data collection and processing for pavement surface distress, pavement ride quality, rut-depth measurements, and joint-faulting measurements. Included in the scope were technologies employed, contracting issues, quality assurance, costs and benefits of automated techniques, monitoring frequencies and sampling protocols in use, degree of adoption of national standards for data collection, and contrast between the state of the art and the state of the practice. Three case studies are included as examples of transportation agencies applying a variety of methods for pavement condition data collection and processing. This synthesis report included a review of published literature of North American and European resources and a survey of state transportation agencies, the Federal Highway Administration, Canadian provinces, and the World Road Association. In addition, information was gathered from the October 2002 Pavement Evaluation Conference, held in Roanoke, Virginia. Three previous syntheses (NCHRP Syntheses 76, 126, and 203) have summarized much of the background material and are referenced frequently in this report.