ISSN XXXX XXXX © 2017 IJESC

Research Article Volume 7 Issue No.6

Development of GIS Integrated Pavement Management System

(PMS) for Rural Roads
Sumesh Rajan1, Saranya Zacharia2
M.Tech Scholar (Transportation) 1, Assistant Professor (Adhoc) 2
Department of Civil engineering
Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Kottayam, India

Abstract:
Pavement Management System (PMS) is a set of tools or methods that can assist decision makers in finding cost effective
strategies for providing, evaluating, and maintaining pavement in a serviceable condition. This study aim to how ArcGIS software
is used as a decision support tool for the maintenance of road networks; the paved rural road stretches of kottayam district is taken
as a study area. Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating was performed on each road in the network using pavement condition
rating form and scale. Spatial and a Visual spatial information of the road network which include the digital map of the road
network, the coordinates of defect’s location, defect type, image and size etc. were used to develop a relational database. The
database developed in EXCEL software was imported into Arc GIS software to allow for ease of analysis and query of the
database and ease of visual and graphical displays of results. The main objective of this study is to develop a GIS based pavement
management system that provides information for use in identification of more deteriorated road, optimum maintenance strategy
and also pavement condition for future scenario. In this study, a pavement condition model is also developed based on GIS
Database. Statistical software SPSS is used for this purpose.

Keywords: Pavement Management System, Pavement Condition Rating, Arc GIS, SPSS

1. INTRODUCTION pavements are maintained to the desired level at an

appropriate time, it is possible to save the losses in road user
The road networks are capacity constraint and structurally cost. In view of the budgetary constraints and the need for
deficient due to lack of timely maintenance, rehabilitation and judicious spending of available resources, the maintenance
upgradation. This has adversely affected the traffic movement, planning and budgeting are required to be done based on
resulting into higher operating costs and delays. Maintenance scientific methods. The whole life cycle cost analysis based on
and up gradation of such a large network is a challenging task the road user cost relationships enables the decision makers to
because of the logistics and constraints of resources. There is a examine financial and economic implications of various
need to manage the network more efficiently in a scientific options for formulating appropriate strategies for cost effective
manner; the most important aspect lacking is the application of use of resources.
information system. A variety of spatially integrated data are
important to pavement management decision making. GIS 3. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
technology is shown to be the most logical way of relating
these diverse, but relevant, data. The GIS based pavement  To detect and locate distresses in selected road surface.
management system would eventually lead to the development  Map out and digitize the road network of the selected
of the frame work for GIS based Pavement Management study stretch.
System). Here I had reviewed the role of GIS for pavement  To classify the type, severity and quantity of the
management system. distress along road stretches.
The Pavement Management Systems is a set of tools or  Evaluate the condition of the road pavement.
methods that can assist decision makers in finding cost  Identify the appropriate maintenance and rehabilitation
effective strategies for providing, evaluating, and maintaining project needs on the roads.
pavements in a serviceable condition. It provides the  Develop a GIS database of the spatial and attribute data
information necessary to make these decisions. The PMMS of the road network.
consists of two basic components: A comprehensive database,  Developing Model for pavement condition prediction.
which contains current and historical information on pavement
condition, pavement structure, and traffic. The second
4. LITERATURE REVIEW
component is a set of tools that allows us to determine existing
Geographic information systems (GIS) are much more than
and future pavement conditions, predict financial needs, and
computer generated maps. GIS is a sophisticated database
identify and prioritize pavement projects.
management system designed especially for spatially
referenced data. The use of Geographic Information System
2. NEED FOR THE STUDY (GIS) in pavement management is utilized at different levels
The Road User Cost Study in India has established that due to
and covers the different steps from developing to
improper maintenance and poor surface condition of road
implementing a pavement management system. GIS is used in
pavements, there is a considerable economic loss to the
the design of the PMS database, in the data integration process
country due to increase in vehicle operation costs. If the road
(inventory, history, condition, etc) and finally in

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communicating the results of the PMS (Smadi, 2004). pavement condition rating scale. A visual conditional survey
Karwan Ghazi Fendia (2013): This study aim to produce a was conducted by walking through the road lengths. Data
GIS Database for Road Surface Monitoring. This system is collected during the exercise include:
easy to use, cost-effective, deployable, and can be used  Selected road stretches within the district are visited
effectively by local authorities. The study consists of by vehicle and data about the type, severity level,
producing a GIS database for road surface monitoring from geographic location, dimensions, and photos of the
collected distress data. The information about the road distress are recorded.
distresses are collected in Nottingham city – UK. However,  A hand-held GPS can be used for the location of
this study didn’t consider the traffic volume is an account for distresses.
pavement distress. NOR A. M. Nasir et. al (2016): In this  High resolution digital camera used for capturing
study , a road distress data was collected using GPS images of distresses.
applications supported by Supersurv 3 software. The study  Dimension of each distress is measured by tape at
shows that the GIS method helps to produce a good spatial each severity level.
database. The objective of this paper is to identify the
locations of road distress in UKM. The coordinates of the 5.3 Traffic Volume Survey
location in distress will be marked using GPS technology. The Traffic volume survey conducted on selected road stretches at
second objective is to produce spatial data storage of road peak hour. The above study stretches is also considered for
distresses by using GIS, and the last objective is to classify the traffic volume survey.
road distresses into three severity levels and to study the
relationship between the road distress and the slope factor. 5.4 Geotagging
This study didn't make a pavement prediction model and The geographical identification metadata, such as latitude and
pavement condition model. Vishwanath G, Mahdev, M. R. longitude, is added to every photo taken for each point. Arc
Archana, and Krishna Prapoorna Biligiri (2013) have done the GIS software 10.3 in conjunction with the GPS data is used
development of pavement management strategies for arterial for geotagging.
roads. This study aims at bringing out the methodology used
in carrying out the survey on the pavement and for rating of 5.5 Data Processing and Analysis
the pavement (PCI) with the case studies of four arterial roads The collected data which includes the defect type, defect
of Rajarajeshwari Zone, Bangalore city and the PCIs of rating location, extent etc., were input into EXCEL, processed as
of these pavements at the time of studies was found to be from appropriate and imported into ArcGIS Software for
very poor to excellent. Pavement management strategies have establishing database. The flow chart of the data processing is
been proposed based on the condition rating. There are several shown below in fig 5.1.
studies conducted that describe, how GIS technology can help
in visualizing and interpretation of the data for decision
making purposes in the field of road maintenance and
rehabilitation. Very few studies were conducted related to
pavement management with GIS in a rural roads containing
considerable amount of traffic.

5. METHODOLOGY

5.1 . Project Study Stretch

The project study stretch chosen for this research include 7
rural road segments in kottayam district. The details of road
stretches shown in the following table 5.1. Figure. 5.1: Showing data processing steps
Table 5.1. Showing the details of study stretches 5.6 Establishing Database for GIS
After creating attributes table of all study stretches, different
details related to pavement like distress type, images of
distress, severity, quantity of distresses along road stretch and
traffic volume are assigned to each road stretch. Microsoft
excel software is used for this application.

5.7 Developing Pavement Condition model

In this study, pavement condition model were developed in
SPSS software. The pavement distresses and traffic volume
data collected over 7 road segment including 98 uniform
stretches of 100 m length covering rural roads have been used
for modelling. Data on the randomly selected 5 road segment
(approximately 70% of the observed values) were used for
model development, and the remaining 2 road segments (30%
of the observed values) were kept aside for the model
validation. A multiple linear regression model has been
5.2 Data Collection developed to find the relation between PCI (Pavement
Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating was performed on Condition Rating) and pavement distress parameters using
each of the roads using pavement condition rating form and SPSS software (www.spss.com). In this model, PCI value is

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taken as the dependent variable and the measured distress 7.2 Estimation of PCI value
quantity, severity, pavement condition score and traffic
volume as independent variables. PCI is a numerical rating of the pavement condition that
ranges from 0 -100 with 0 being worst possible condition 100
6. ROAD PAVEMENT CONDITION IN A GIS being the best possible condition (ASTM D 6433-07). The
DATABASE PCI provides a measure of the present condition of the
pavement based on the distress observed on the surface of the
For the preparation of database of pavement condition in pavement, which also indicates the structural integrity and
ArcGIS the following steps followed. surface operational condition. The PCI values obtained from
1) Collection of pavement distress details (image, type, visual inspection i.e. distress survey by recording the severity
severity, quantity and location). and extent of the various distress namely cracking, rutting and
2) Traffic volume at peakhour along all road stretch. potholes occurred to pavement can be utilized well in
3) Digitization of road network map of kottayam district prioritizing the maintenance strategies. The following
collected from kerala PWD. calculation procedure is adopted for PCI value estimation
4) Pavement condition data input into EXCEL and (Vishwanath G et.al , 2013). PCI value estimated from
imported into ArcGIS. deduct value (DV), which is defined as the value that
5) Geotagging of distress photos with location and details. represents the amount of distress that a pavement has
6) Developing GIS database with pavement condition undergone or is subjected to. The density of each distress was
details and images. calculated using the Eqn 2.
The following figure 6.1 showing GIS mapping of distresses
in Pinnakkanadu – Chettuthodu Road.

The DVs were determined from the DV curves, then for each
distress type and severity Total Deduct Value (TDV) was
computed by summing up all the DVs then the Corrected
Deduct Value (CDV) was determined from CDV curve shown
in Fig. 7.1. Then the PCI was computed using the Eqn. 3
PCI = 100 – CDV (3)

Figure .6.1. Showing GIS mapping of distress in

Pinnakkanadu - Chettuthodu Road

7. PAVEMENT CONDITION MODEL

The distress parameters such as cracking, potholes, rutting,

ravelling and patching directly affect the condition of the
pavement, the impact of this distress in terms of extent and
severity and also consider the traffic volume at peak hour Figure.2. Deduct value curves for asphalt-surfaced
which needs to be considered to develop a model which would pavements
be relevant in rural roads in Indian context. This would also Determination of appropriate maintenance measures for
help the decision makers to identify the optimum strategy for various ranges of PCI value is shown in table 7.1.
maintenance before the repair costs become too high. In
addition, measuring the condition and performance of roads Table.7.1:Determination of appropriate maintenance
are continuously developed overtime with the new methods measures
and improvements.

7.1 Developing pavement condition model

In this study, the pavement distress collected in the terms of

extent and severity is converted to numerical value and for
appearance of each distresses put the score from 0 to 3 (KYTC
Pavement Distress Identification Manual 2009). There are a
total of 4 input variables, such as extent, severity, appearance
and traffic volume.

Model in the form of PCI= aX1+bX2+cX3+dX4, (1)

PCI = Pavement Condition Index (Dependent variable)
X1 = Extent of distress in square metre
X2 = Severity of distress (Score 0 to 9)
X3 = Traffic volume in PCU 8. DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
X4 = Appearance of distress (Score 0 to 3) 8.1 Pavement distress analysis and Estimation of PCI
a,b,c and d are the coefficients of independent variables Pavement distress analysis result and obtained PCI value for
each stretch is shown in table 8.1.

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Table 8.1: Pavement distress analysis result and PCI The validation result obtained from SPSS output is shown
table 8.3.

Table. 8.3: Model validation result from SPSS

95% Confidence
interval for difference
Mean Student- Lower Upper
Parameters Difference t Bound Bound
Extent 0.73 10.429 -0.1594 1.6194
Severity 4.805 10.798 -0.84926 10.45926
Traffic 102 3.643 -253.77 457.77
Appearance 2.05 8.2 -1.12655 5.22655
The above results show that all mean difference value fall
under the 95% confidence interval value. So the model is
validated.

8.4 Pavement condition in GIS database

The following figure 8.2 shows that one of the GIS database
8.2 Model Output of pavement condition for Pinnakkanadu- Chettuthodu Road.
The final model that is obtained from SPSS analysis is shown The corresponding pavement distress image is geotagged as a
in table 8.2. raster in GIS database.

So, the model is,

PCI= 131.809X1+2.007X2-0.172X3-20.889X4

8.3 Model Validation Figure .8.2. Showing pavement condition in GIS database
The validation process can involve analyzing the goodness of
fit of the regression, analyzing whether the regression 9. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
residuals are random, and checking whether the models
perspective performance deteriorates substantially when  It was observed from the analysis of pavement distress
applied to data that were not used in model estimation. Thirty data in GIS database that the road stretch Pinnakkanadu
percentage of the data that is not used for calibration is used to Chettuthodu and Kappadu to Manthara road needs
for validating the models. The model was validated using reconstruction with extensive base repair. It is due to
student t -test. A plot has been drawn between estimated and considerable amount of daily traffic with least structural
observed PCI value as shown in figure 8.1. The scatter of the adequacy.
points about the line is an indication of the effectiveness of the  A quick and cost-effective method is proposed in this
model developed for estimating the PCI. work to establish a database for GIS for road surface
monitoring purposes.
 The model developed in this study depicting the
relationship between the PCI and the pavement
condition parameters shows that besides the usual
distresses the traffic volume is not significantly affect
the pavement condition in the case of rural roads in
Indian contest.
 Validation of the model was carried out using Student-t
test and the model gave good result and the model can
be useful for estimating PCI value for rural roads
considering the distress parameters and traffic volume.

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International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, June 2017 13565 http://ijesc.org/
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