PAVEMENT PERFORMANCE MODELING FOR PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT

Systematic pavement management requires estimates or predictions of future pavement performance so that rational comparisons may be made among alternative courses of action. Performance models are required in two distinct contexts, depending on the pavement management level involved. At the project level, fairly detailed and specific models are required for predicting the performance expected for an individual pavement section. At the network level, general or average prediction models are required to provide estimates of the expected performance for a typical pavement or class of pavements. Accordingly, quite distinct modeling methods are indicated for these two different modeling needs. Performance-modeling requirements and data requirements for both network-level and project-level applications are discussed. An idealized experiment to collect data for performance modeling is presented. A specific performance prediction model based on stochastic concepts and treating pavement deterioration as a Markov process is presented as an example of the development of prediction models for network-level applications. (Author)