VTI, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, has released a report that explains an approach for creating a prognostic model for a road surface condition index. The report is written in Swedish with an English summary.
In Sweden, the road surface condition is assessed regularly with laser-based profilo-graphs. This has been done since 1987. The purpose of these assessments is to provide the Swedish Transport Administration’s Pavement Management System (PMS) with data. All roads are, for financial reasons, not assessed every year, but the Swedish Transport Administration still needs a complete description of the road condition.
One way to describe the condition of the entire road network is to work with models that forecast the condition the year when measurements are missing. This report has two main purposes. Firstly, to develop a methodology/approach how to create a prognostic model for a condition index that can change both linearly and non-linearly. Secondly, during the method development, create a prognostic model for MPD.
The model is data-driven generated, but it also describes the time evolution. From this we can see clear trends for MPD development on an annual basis.
The approach used to create a prognostic model for MPD can be used for other road surface characteristics such as megatexture, edge depth, water area, etc