ADAPTING AN AUTOMATED DATA COLLECTION DEVICE FOR USE AT AN AIRPORT

O'Hare International Airport, in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the busiest and largest airports in the world. It is critically important to maintain all the O'Hare airside and landside pavements in operational and safe condition. Accurate and current distress data are needed to document the present condition of the pavement, to determine maintenance and rehabilitation needs, and to form the basis of a pavement management system. However, it is very difficult to collect pavement condition information safely and accurately in this extremely congested environment. A demonstration project was conducted on one runway and one parallel taxiway to determine the feasibility of using automated data collection equipment for distress data collection. The demonstration project was successful, and a full-scale data collection effort was undertaken to film the remaining runways and parallel taxiways. This approach allowed the data to be collected between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. In addition, data collection was fast and efficient. Modifications to the procedures and equipment used to collect distress information on roads had to be made to use this equipment successfully on airfield pavements. A method for maintaining a straight pass down the runway had to be devised. A lighting system had to be developed because the data collection occurred during the nighttime hours. Finally, data interpretation was modified to obtain an acceptable estimate of a pavement condition index.