(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The information associated
with a road surface type
is essential for efficient pavement management prediction
of skid numbers and overall performance.
While surface type is already a data element
in Pavement Analyst, it lacks the necessary accuracy.
The Texas Department of Transportation
with researchers from the Center for Transportation Research
used advanced technologies
to predict pavement surface types more accurately
than current techniques.
- In recent years, TxDOT has implemented
a very comprehensive pavement management system.
In Texas, it's called Pavement Analyst.
- And it distinguishes between asphalt/concrete pavements,
continuously reinforced concrete pavements,
and then jointed concrete pavements.
And this distinction is really to allow characterization
of specific stresses that we measure on these surfaces.
- [Jorge] Part of this system contains a very large database
that contains the stresses and ride quality of all sections
on the network that TxDOT manages.
The system is used by both pavement engineers
and maintenance engineers from every district
to develop the so-called four-year pavement management plan.
And this plan is the one that they developed
to assign the treatment type
that each section has to be subject to
in the next four years.
- [Andre] The researchers,
they developed both hardware and software systems
for surface type prediction.
On the hardware side,
this included integrated laser scanners,
high-speed cameras and lighting systems
to capture high-resolution pavement profiles and images
at highway speeds.
And then on the software side,
they developed algorithms to analyze these data
using machine learning techniques
towards surface type prediction.
- First, it differentiates it's flexible or rigid.
Within rigid pavements,
it differentiates the type of finishing
that those rigid pavements have.
And for flexible pavements,
it differentiates the type of mix that is used,
whether it's a dense mix or a fine mix or a open mix, etc.
- The old method of identifying surface types of pavements
required manually looking up the data
in different textbook databases, all right.
So we would look Site Manager in the QCA database.
We would scan the bid item lists,
look at the project descriptions in TxDOT.
And this information was not always accurate, right.
Because the mixture type can change during construction,
and often the districts will perform in-house overlays
of seal coats that are very difficult to track.
So this system really provides us a means
of ensuring consistency for better asset management.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.