Automated management of pavement inspection system (AMPIS) - Gestione integrata automatica delle pavimentazioni stradali

Introduction 
There exist many useful and efficient surveying methods to detect distressed pavement. 
Most methods perform pavement surface distress detection automatically. However, those 
methods do not manage and integrate the detected results along with the documentation that 
include geographical components, such as maps indicating the roads and transportation 
networks. Traditional man-made inspection and documentation methods rely on human visual 
capability which causes this pavement survey work to be cumbersome and inefficient. 
Furthermore, documents created from the surveys are hard to retrieve and inconvenient to 
review by Department of Transportation (DOT) Agencies as well as transportation engineers. 
With these concerns, this study is underway to develop the Automated Management of 
Pavement Inspection System (AMPIS) that will avoid these problems and allow automatic 
and systematic pavement inspections. AMPIS integrates video image processing for surface 
crack detection within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework using ArcGIS 
software.  
In this study, an existing pavement management system and several available 
surveying/evaluation methods are reinvestigated. A more cost-effective method, AMPIS, 
which employs video imagery coupled with an information technology-based GIS platform, is 
proposed. A new automated management tool with a graphical user interface is also 
described.  
In the early 1980's, the Department of the Army investigated a pavement management 
system (PMS) that could be applied in the field for inspection and management of airport 
runways and highway and road surfaces. The system was designed to inspect pavement 
damage, rate the degree of damage, and manage the documents created from the surveys. The 
documents created by the system provide important information for short and long-term 
maintenance and repair planning, especially for critical arterials such as military airport 
runways and transportation networks that transport personnel and deliver civilian and military 
supplies. The Department of the Army’s PMS manual provides guidelines that led the authors 
to developing the modern AMPIS system.  
Recently, PMS techniques have been revisited by civil and transportation engineers. 
Their studies may lead to emergence of commercial highway pavement survey packages that 
provide efficient and effective maintenance solutions for inspectors and Department of 
Chapter 1 
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 Automated Management of Pavement Inspection System 4 
Transportation agencies. This study revisits previous studies on surface distress detection. A 
new solution using AMPIS is presented to deal with pavement distress problems. It will 
provide automated acquisition, analysis and management of the data acquired by means of 
digital imaging of pavement conditions. 
1.1 AMPIS blueprint and components 
In 1982, the Department of the Army produced the “Technical Manual of Pavement 
Maintenance Management” where the industry standard for PMS is introduced first. This 
technical manual highlighted interesting study areas on pavement condition inspection and 
documentation. In the manual, PMS is divided into five major components (Figure 1): 
network identification, pavement condition inspection, maintenance and repair (M&R) 
determination, economic analysis of M&R alternatives, and data management. Each 
component is unique in the effort to manage pavement inspection and documentation. In 
AMPIS, these PMS components are reformatted to take advantage of the geographical 
information system (GIS). The chart of AMPIS components and their relationship to the GIS 
database is shown in Figure 2. 
5
Data
Management
5
Data
Management
4
Economic
Analysis
4
Economic
Analysis
3
Maintenance
& Repair 
Planning
3
Maintenance
& Repair 
Planning
1
Network Identification
1
Network Identification
DataBase
2
Pavement Condition 
Inspection
2
Pavement Condition 
Inspection
 
Figure 1:Components of PMS in the US Army Technical Manual, 1982 
 
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Chapter 1 - Introduction 5 
1.1.1 Network identification 
The mission of network identification is to divide an entire network system into 
manageable segments and identify the coordinates of each segment in preparation for the 
distress survey. Usually this task is done within the office before the inspection process 
begins. In the past, this task was time consuming and required much manpower. Prior to using 
GIS, transportation engineers and road distress inspectors struggled with the collective 
process of carrying maps, retrieving data, preparing for inspections, maintaining map records, 
and updating documentation. Using GIS software this work is minimized and many tasks can 
be solved automatically. The network identification process can now be simplified and is 
easier to manage using GIS. 
Automatic 
distress 
detection
Personalized 
Distress Rating
Previous 
surveys results 
comparisonMosaicking
Images 
preprocessing
GPS Data
Frame 
Grabbing
5 - Data
Management
5 - Data
anagement
4 - Economic
Analysis
4 - Economic
Analysis
3 - Maintenance
& Repair 
Planning
3 - Maintenance
& Repair 
Planning
1 - Network Identification1 - Network Identification
Acquisition Elaboration
2 - Pavement Condition 
Inspection
Layer 5
Layer 4
Layer 3
Layer 2
Layer 1
Arc-GIS
 
Figure 2: AMPIS blueprint; components and their relationships  
1.1.2 Pavement condition inspection and distress rating 
The most important component in PMS is the pavement condition survey that includes 
distress inspection in the field and the rating procedures for archiving. Inspectors have to 
perform in-situ inspections and record information based on the officially approved rating 
procedures. The results made from this inspection process are documented as an important 
reference for the maintenance and repair (M&R) decisions. Department of Transportation 
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 Automated Management of Pavement Inspection System 6 
agencies must look up these documents and develop new plans for M&R projects 
accordingly.  
The US Army defined the pavement condition index, PCI, and produced evaluation 
tables that field inspectors could use to assess and express quantitatively the local pavement 
condition. In the PCI, pavement condition is related to factors such as structural integrity, 
structural capacity, roughness, skid resistance, and rate of distress. These factors are 
quantified in the evaluation table that the inspectors use (Figure 3). Inspectors are fully 
responsible to evaluate the field damage severity. Mostly, inspectors use their own judgment 
to assess the distress condition. The manpower required for direct measurement of all the PCI 
factors has been too expensive and the processes have been time consuming.  
These problems are significantly alleviated using AMPIS since the pavement condition 
survey relies on the recognition of image patterns recorded by the digital image device. 
Evaluation of PCI rating is dependent on the visualization from the analytical results through 
image processing. Rating procedures are also simplified. The results are free from the 
human’s errors and possible idiosyncrasies. Correlation analysis can then be performed as 
they are compared with the results archived in the past. 
 
 
Figure 3: PCI evaluation procedure in the USA Army Technical Manual, 1982 
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Chapter 1 - Introduction 7 
1.1.3 Maintenance and repair (M&R) decision 
Maintenance and repair guidelines are based on the PCI evaluation process and the 
factors used to design pavement loading-and-carrying capacity. PCI is an important index for 
maintenance and repair determination in which the overall conditions of the observed road 
surface are evaluated. The evaluated results from the PCI process are entered into PMS so that 
managers can be informed whether or not a road surface condition is below the acceptable 
score. The M&R planners also need to review the information in order to create new M&R 
projects or rehabilitation tasks.  
1.1.4 Economic analysis of M&R alternatives 
Selecting the best M&R plan often requires a cost-benefit analysis with respect to 
practical alternative plans taking socio-economic analysis into consideration. M&R plans 
impact the long-term service quality and durable life of repaired and maintained road surfaces 
of highway network. The procedure for determining the present economic value of each M&R 
alternative involves an analysis of discount and inflation rates, an estimation of annual costs 
for maintenance and repair charges, and predicting the additional expenses that will develop 
dur ing the pavement service life cycle.  
AMPIS serves as a database for socio-economic experts to perform economic analyses 
of M&R alternatives, providing useful attribute tables and itemized data, such as the lengths, 
lanes and widths of highways, the cost per highway section, for utilizing socio-economic 
analyses.  
1.1.5 Data Management 
Data collected during the PMS components previously defined, must be stored and 
managed in a database so that it can be conveniently retrieved, reviewed and updated. 
Traditional documentation methods (before computers were available) must be upgraded to 
take advantage of computers that have information-based software capable of managing large 
databases. These systems must allow users to analyze data and visualize results generated by 
the PMS. AMPIS readily incorporates tabular and spatial data (maps, raster data and 
photographic images) acquired during surface distress detection projects by using the database 
capabilities of ArcGIS and Visual Basic (VBA) programming. 
 
 
2.1-What is a 
PMS?2.1-What is a PMS?
2.2-How PMS 
works2.2-How PMS works
2.3-Example of 
Manual PMS2.3-Example of Manual PMS
2.4-Example of 
Automatic PMS2.4-Example of Automatic PMS
Pavement 
Management 
System
Chapter 2
2.5-PMS in the 
world2.5-PMS in the world
2 - Pavement 
Management 
System
2 - Pavement 
Management 
System
3 – Pavement 
Distress
3 – Pavement 
Distress
4 - GPS4 - GPS
5 - Image 
Acquisition
5 - Image 
Acquisition
6 - Image 
Processing
6 - Image 
Processing
7 - Developed 
System7 - Developed System
8 - Case 
Study
8 - Case 
Study
9 - Conclusion9 - Conclusion
1 -
Introduction
1 -
Introduction
10 -
Appendices
10 -
Appendices
 
Pavement Management System (PMS) 
PMS: application software system consisting of analysis method for processing 
pavement condition and physical inventory data, automated project analysis, network 
analysis, and strategy analysis. 
The definition, from the paper “Role of Pavement Management System Analysis in 
Preservation Program Development”, suggests what is a PMS and what it does. Such a sharp 
definition hides a huge reality of different methods, algorithms and standards to fulfill the 
needing of road agencies of every country of the world. 
2.1. What is a Pavement Management System? 
The American Public Works Association (APWA) defines a pavement management 
system (PMS) “a systematic method for routinely collecting, storing, and retrieving the kind 
of decision-making information needed (about pavements) to make maximum use of limited 
maintenance (and construction) dollars.”  
It is also a set of tools or computer routines for quickly using the information and 
making the calculations necessary to arrive at these decisions. Pavement management is not 
an end product in itself, but rather an additional tool to help engineers, budget directors, 
maintenance managers, and others to do their jobs better. In all cases, professional judgment 
is enhanced, not replaced by a PMS.  
Through a systematic analysis of pavement life cycles, a PMS can determine the most 
appropriate time to rehabilitate pavement, what are the most cost-effective methods, and how 
many money it will take to maintain a roadway system at a desirable conditio n level. All 
agencies manage their pavements in some way; they are already using some level of 
pavement management. A formalized PMS is not something entirely new but an improvement 
on an agency’s existing practices. It aids, not replaces, what a jurisdiction is already doing.  
One of the first published document about the Pavement Management System is the 
Technical Manual of Pavement Maintenance Management of the department of U.S.Army. 
This document has been published in 1982 and it contains a detailed description of every part 
of PMS. The system has been called PAVER and it represent one of the first PMS available to 
perform a complete management of asphalt or concrete surfaced roads, streets, parking lots, 
and hardstands. In every PMS software on sale is possible to recognize the subdivision in 
Chapter 2