The design and use of a road materials inventory

Any highway engineering project demands information on the availability, quality and costs of road-making materials. This paper describes a pilot road materials inventory for West Java, which combined a research project to investigate the most efficient techniques to be used with a full survey for one Indonesian province. A preliminary desk study identified existing sources most of which were visited and classified on site, using special forms designed to provide easy entry of the information into a computer database. Representative samples were taken for testing and recommendations on their potential use similarly codified. All samples were classified according to geology and terrain units. The paper explains how such a data store can be used for road planning and construction projects, giving examples of data extracted from the computer database in a format suited to a District Engineer. It concludes with a description of how the study could be extended to other areas to produce an integrated national inventory. (A)