Towards sustainable local urban road pavements

Preservation of pavements reduces the waste from reconstruction and the associated costs, delays and environmental effects. Controlling the deterioration of road pavement through timely maintenance can extend its life and reduces the likelihood of failure and/or further damage and subsequent traffic and environmental problems. The type of maintenance program and the accuracy of its timing depends largely on the reliability of the available performance models, which is dependent on the quality of condition data. Local government agencies in Australia have a limited budget to manage their road assets and limited condition data is collected every 5-10 years. This paper describes a simple methodology for developing cracking models of asphalt-surfaced pavements from the available limited condition data. The models developed in this study were validated using other data sets and compared with some of the published cracking models. The new methodology proved to be effective and reliable.