A Web-Based Rural Road Asset Management System

Transcription

1 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 1 A Web-Based Rural Road Asset Management System Pannapa Herabat, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Civil Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, P. O. Bo 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani Thailand. Tel: (66-2) ; Fa: (66-2) ; pannapa@ait.ac.th Adjo Amekudzi, Ph.D., School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 790 Atlantic Drive, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, Tel: (404) , Fa: (404) , adjo.amekudzi@ce.gatech.edu Dussadee Satirasetthavee, Ph.D. student, School of Civil Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, P. O. Bo 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani Thailand. Tel: (66-2) ; Fa: (66-2) ; dussadee_s@hotmail.com Total Number of Words: 4, Tables (250) + 5 Figures (1,250) = 6,285

2 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 2 ABSTRACT The Department of Acceleration Rural Development (ARD) of Thailand has currently undergone a major structure reform according to the new direction of National Economic and Social Development Plan No. 9 (NESDP) which aims to decentralize government authority into sub-district levels. The goals of sub-district level management are to improve the quality of life and living standard of people in terms of economic and social development in the rural areas. Restructuring the maintenance practice and policy to complement the new orientation of the National Economic and Social Development Plan and to enable the proper planning of rural road asset maintenance activities, a systematic rural road asset management system is implemented to achieve the goal of the sub-district and central management. A web-based technology is used to provide an easy linkage between the central and the remote offices for both the network and the project level management. This paper presents a discussion on the organizational barriers, system development process, tools and technology, data integration, and benefits of the improved data management. The data in the developed system include pavement, bridges, drainage system, traffic signs, pavement marking, and vegetation problems. This paper discusses how web-based information technology can be applied to an asset management system. The benefits are measured in terms of productivity; profitability; and rural road user effects. Keywords: Rural Road Maintenance, Web-Based Information Technology, and Asset Management System

3 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 3 INTRODUCTION The Department of Accelerated Rural Development (ARD) is an official organization under the Ministry of the Interior. It is responsible for developing, constructing, and maintaining the infrastructure in rural areas. ARD infrastructures cover a wide range of public utilities and facilities which include roads, bridges, culverts, sign structures, and etc. Most rural people use roads as a major transportation mode for commuting, traveling and delivering goods from one community to the net. Maintaining roads and other infrastructures at an acceptable level to ensure public safety and provide good quality of life is the mission of ARD. Road deteriorates through time due to many factors such as environment, traffic loads, and construction quality. One component of the road is pavement. Based on numerous previous works, the pavement distresses and their deterioration may be caused by age, usage, and other significant factors such as traffic, design, construction quality, and environment. ARD has been maintaining approimately 50,000 kilometers of rural road network throughout Thailand. ARD plans their maintenance activities from the central office in Bangkok. The allocated budget for road maintenance is still inadequate compared with the required maintenance workload. Due to limited funds and human resources in this department, it is very difficult to properly manage all their roads in terms of maintenance planning, scheduling and budgeting. ARD has currently undergone a major structural reform according to the new direction of National Economic and Social Development Plan No. 9 which aims to decentralize government authority into sub-district levels (1). The goals of sub-district level management are to improve the quality of life and living standard of people in terms of economic and social development in the rural areas. The decentralization process is an on-going process that is epected to be fully implemented by October Restructuring the maintenance practice and policy to complement the new orientation of the National Economic and Social Development Plan and to enable the proper planning of road maintenance activities, a systematic rural road asset management system is implemented to achieve the goal of the sub-district and central management. The system can provide an easy linkage between the network level and the project level. ARD s Road Maintenance Management System (RMS) was first developed in 1998 by the cooperation of the Department of Accelerated Rural Development (ARD) and Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH from Germany. The original RMS is a simplified database management system that stores inspection data. Inspection data is collected from different remote offices throughout the country based on the RMS inspection procedures. Many problems are raised since RMS only focuses on pavements which eclude rural road assets. Asset management incorporates a more generalized approach to maintain and manage the agencies asset in the most cost-effective manner (2). In year 2001, etensive efforts were made to improve the system capabilities to cover other rural road asset management (i.e. bridges, drainage systems, traffic signs and vegetation problems). In 2002, a completed web-based rural road asset management system (RRAMS) is being developed by incorporating web-based information technology into the system which provides effective data accessibility, data transfer, and data echange within the central office and remote offices (3). The developed system redesigned the data collection and data analysis process for all rural road assets in accordance with the NESDP No.9. All inventory data, both historical data and inspection data and maintenance planning records are integrated. These data are scattered in different ARD divisions. Data integration is the most difficult task due to the large amount of available information. Discussion on data integration will be pursued in the sections below. In addition, the developed system has prepared its data collection process to be compatible with further developments including other tools and technology integration such as a Geographic Information System (GIS). ORGANIZATION BARRIER The Thai government has the responsibility to attain the National Economic and Social Development Plans. The NESDP No. 9 was established to decentralize government authority into districts and sub-district levels. In the past, the rural roads and their assets were managed under the responsibility of the ARD maintenance division, which sometimes causes delays in maintenance processing and planning. The condition of rural roads and its assets is reported to the Maintenance division in Bangkok (the capitol city of Thailand) by paper-based reports which come from remote offices. In the centralized system, the overall public work maintenance planning could not respond to the immediate needs in the rural areas, yielding maintenance backlogs and inefficiency for different provincial areas. In addition, it is possible that the actual response from the central office could be different than the actual request due to the inefficiency of data representation and the distance between where the problem occurred and the central

4 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 4 office where decisions are made. These problems have a strong influence on why the new policy of the central government offices needs to be adapted and to provide the decentralization of power from the central government to the local authorities. The central government has established NESDP No. 9 aiming to decentralize their management and planning authority to different local authorities or sub-district levels in order to manage and respond to the needs of the remote areas. The central government enforces this plan within the different public works organizations. Therefore, local government authorities or agencies are formed for different local areas. Assets which are currently managed by the central public works offices will be transferred to the local government agencies. The budgets for different sub-districts will be allocated from the central public works organizations that are involved. The role of the public works organization will now change from controlling all management planning to assisting the different subdistrict offices, ensuring a uniform practice across the country and managing quality control. The actual detailed management and planning will depend on the practices at the different local offices. National Economic and Social Development Plan No. 9 National Economic and Social Development Plan No.9 (NESDP) is the most current master plan for national development (1). The plan is established to be effective from years The goal of NESDP No. 9 is to distribute the decision power to local government authorities. Local government authorities consist of the local government officers and public participation for all decision-making. Public involvement helps the decision-making process to be more effective since the involvement can truly reflect and identify the needs of the local areas. Four main components of the local government authority according to NESDP No. 9 are shown in Figure 1. A detailed discussion of each component is presented as follows: 1. Mission Mission of each individual local authority needs to be clear and comply with the nation s master plan. The main tasks of the local government authority are to manage and maintain their infrastructures under the supervision of the central public works organization. The rural infrastructures are not limited to roads and bridges, but it is rather the basic infrastructures that are used by the locals which are for eample, wastewater treatment, pipeline systems, telecommunication, and electrical distribution. 2. Policy and Process the policy needs to be set in accordance with the mission of each local agency. The overall framework of the local agency needs to be established. Procedures and standards for different processes should be clarified, for eample, budget allocation policy, workload distribution, and performance evaluation. The infrastructure management process should involve inspection, planning, policy, maintenance, scheduling and budget allocation. 3. Strategy - specialized technicians and eperts are scarce in the rural areas. When central government assets are transferred to the local authority, the technology and its technicality need to be distributed to the locals. Otherwise, the quality of management, planning, construction and maintenance will not meet the standards of the central office. The strategy is aimed to have the central government as the main authority that sets the standards of the management and maintenance system and assists the locals to meet the standards. 4. Supporting System and Implementation Process the supporting system that is currently used by the central offices is transferred to the locals. In this case, ARD has to transfer their web-based RRAMS to support the local maintenance management and planning. The main components of the RRAMS are hardware, software and training. The hardware is the personal computer (PC) at the local government agency which will be linked with the main server at the ARD central office. The software is the program itself. Training is required to help improve the knowledge and transfer advanced technology to the locals. Training is an on-going process. There are many components in the management system, for eample, inspection, prioritization, deterioration modeling and economic analysis. In order for the new system to be successful, institutional issues need to be addressed when decentralization occurs. ARD plans to have an etensive training for the remote local offices and possibly deploy some of their eperts and technicians to help support and assist the local offices in a hierarchical model which is comprised of the ARD sub-district level office, the ARD district level office and the ARD central office. A WEB-BASED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY In 1998, ARD developed a road maintenance management system (RMS) for pavement management purposes. RMS is a simplified database management system which is used in the central office and remote offices without any linkages. RMS collects pavement condition data. The field survey teams in different local government agencies inspect and assess the condition of the pavement according to the condition assessment procedures of RMS. The

5 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 5 inspection data is then transferred from the local government agency in the paper-based reports to the central ARD office. Delay time in data transfer causes a lack of responsiveness of the maintenance management system. In addition, ARD collects their asset information and condition data by two separate divisions which are the Construction Division and the Maintenance Division. The Construction Division collects the asset data from its initial project planning until the project construction is completed. The asset data are inventory data, detailed design, project construction, contract information and budget data. The Maintenance Division collects inventory data, which partially overlaps with the Construction Division, asset condition data and maintenance records. Different Phases of Information Technology (IT) Before developing or implementing a new management system, different phases of the information technology needs to be identified to view how the system could be improved based on its limitations, and strengthened to incorporate the strategy and the new orientation of the nation s plan. In an information technology diffusion, three main phases of IT diffusion are used to describe the gaps and how to implement a web-based technology as follows (4): a) Substitution of eisting technology Limitations and gaps of an eisting system are identified. The goal of the first phase is to map how information technology (IT) can be used to substitute the eisting process and enhance the capabilities of an eisting system. Substitution of eisting technology should be done with a basis that improves the overall efficiency of the system, for eample, to be able to perform multiple automated tasks in the same time period. b) Enhancement of process - the organization should realize the new, more efficient processes that improve the quality of the project. c) Transformation of organization and strategy - Transformation involves the evolution of strategy to where IT could be a major ingredient of the end results. To apply these phases of technology diffusion to improve the RMS, the first phase was to convert the data in different formats into a systematic database management system. The second phase is to improve and to ensure the data quality by integrating all available information among different divisions in ARD. The integration process involves data structuring and data taonomy. In the third phase, plans and strategies are established for the new system which address all the limitations of the old system and incorporate the new direction of the nation s plan into the system. Data Integration Data sharing and data integration are required to reduce the data discrepancies which can enhance the overall performance of the infrastructure management system. Date suggested that in non-database systems, each application has its own private files. The fact can often lead to considerable redundancy in stored data with the resultant waste in storage space (5). Table 1 illustrates an eample of data taonomy used in the data integration process. As shown in Table 1, some pavement data is stored in the construction division and some in the maintenance division or both. Taonomy concepts demonstrate the data discrepancies, duplications and determine how to reorganize, share and integrate the data from many varied sources in one organization (5).Availabledataare first classified into different groups and subgroups based on their shared characteristics. Taonomy of each group and subgroup are then identified, for eample, rural road assets are divided by types, components, and their attributes as illustrated in Table 1. Pavement data group has its associated information such as geometric information, pavement condition data, detailed design, construction information, and maintenance data. Different information sources for the data taonomy are identified as shown in Table 1. The key benefits of data integration are to improve the data accessibility, quality, and usability of organization facts. Data taonomy is applied to all the available data at ARD. Once data integration is completed, the integrated data needs to be systematically stored. SQL server is used as a central databank or as a data warehouse. SQL server is a database management system that has capabilities to manipulate, edit, and analyze data in the central databank. This completes the first phase of IT diffusion as discussed above. To address all the limitations of the RMS and reorganize ARD in accordance to the new directions of NESDP No.9, a web-based information technology is used to help enhance the overall system capabilities of rural road asset management system. Inspection data, data report verification, and management planning reports can be transferred between the central office and remote offices through the ARD web site. The selection complements the second phase of IT diffusion. The RRAMS has three main processes as shown in Figure 2. Three processes of the developed RRAMS are fact database, data analysis, and reporting system. The personal computers (PCs) are installed at local government agencies in order to support the web-based information technology. The PC is the main equipment to transfer the

6 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 6 data between the local government agencies and the ARD central office. The ARD central databank is the main server that stores all inventory and condition data of the rural road assets. The inspection data is sent from the local government agency to the central ARD office as shown in Figure 2. Central office will use the rural road asset condition from different local agencies to estimate the overall budget in each data for the network-level management. The analyses include maintenance planning, scheduling, prioritization, and budgeting. Once the central office receives the allocated budget from the central government, the central office will further allocate to different local government agencies. The detailed planning and management in the project-level management may differ from one local agency to the net. The overall system improvement can be classified into four categories which are consistency, accessibility and redundancy. Consistency For data consistency, the new RRAMS modifies the new inspection forms to cover all the conditions of each rural road asset for the field survey team. The inspection form sheet has the same format as the input form in the web site. Therefore, the level of data consistency and accuracy will be improved and increase the confidence in maintenance planning and other relevant decision-making processes. Accessibility and Security Levels A web-based system provides an efficient data accessibility in management and planning for ARD offices. However, the major disadvantage of high accessibility is a lower data security. The RRAMS is designed with many security levels that provide different levels of access depending on the user type. Only registered users can access the web-based RRAMS. The security system is created to protect the information stored in the databank. The security levels divide users into four levels as shown in Figure 3: 1. Input Users - This group of users has the main responsibility to input the inspection data from the field survey team (FST). 2. Local Managers - The main responsibilities of local managers are to check the rural road asset management reports within their province only. d) Eecutive Managers - The top-level management group is only interested in the overall pictures of maintenance planning which contains reports, prioritization, planning of different provinces and the budget distribution. Therefore, this group only views the reports and summaries of maintenance planning. e) Administrators - This group of users can access all the system components since they maintain all the system components. Redundancy and Data Validity RRAMS integrates the data from different ARD divisions which are construction division and maintenance division. The data of the ARD are now shared and integrated into a single data set. The benefit of data integration is the maintenance division can use the historical data from the construction division to improve their maintenance strategy and vice versa. Data validity is one of the most essential elements in the maintenance planning since further analyses such as prioritization, maintenance selection and budget estimation & allocation depend on the accuracy of the collected condition data. The developed system has a built-in function that can provide a preliminary data scan for mistakes such as misspellings and typos. In addition, the developed system provides fleibility for users to create rules to check certain parameters. One basic data validation is to check whether the condition deterioration in the entered data is accurate or not. The entered data will be screened by the rules that are set by the administration. Rules developed in the new system are used to check the condition data of the rural roads after maintenance since the condition of the rural roads after the maintenance is applied has to be improved. It is possible that users can enter a higher value of the road condition in order to request more budgets. RURAL ROAD ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Before the mid 1980s and 1990s the Thailand transportation agencies were focused on major building and epansion of the highway system. The main objectives of the rural road construction are to increase accessibility of poor people between the rural areas and highway and to accelerate development of rural areas. Therefore, the standard and quality of the rural is lower than the standard of highway network in terms of number of lanes, design speed, and pavement type. The total distance of rural roads under responsibility of ARD is approimately 50,000 km. The

7 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 7 pavement types are classified into three types which are gravel road, asphalt pavement, and concrete pavement. Due to a lower standard of the rural roads, the deterioration rate of these roads is much more significant than the highway network. The database management system of RRAMS is developed by integrating the data from varied sources. The overall data architecture of rural road asset management system is presented in Figure 4. The rural road asset inventory data, historical maintenance data, asset condition data, and asset treatment data are the four main groups of RRAMS. In addition, the maintenance planning program or AMS analyzes the asset management system by using the asset condition data, maintenance strategy and economical benefit. The economical benefit factors are land use and traffic volume. Traffic volume is collected and classified by different classes of vehicle types. The most unique vehicle types that use rural roads in Thailand are agriculture-equipment vehicles. These vehicle types are used as part of the agriculture and farming in the rural areas. The rural road asset inventory data is the main component that shares the inventory data among different divisions. The rural road inventory data are carriageway, drainage system, traffic signs, and markings. Inspections of rural road assets are conducted on an annual basis unless there is a criticality that requires a more rapid time interval. Maintenance planning program takes into account pavement condition, rural road asset condition, and historical data and then applies economic analysis to plan all maintenance activities. Once the overall physical condition of rural road assets are improved, the post-maintenance condition data is collected in the asset treatment data as shown in Figure 4. BENEFITS OF IMPROVED DATA MANAGEMENT The data of the ARD are currently collected in separate divisions by both paper-based and computer-based systems. The new infrastructure facilities data which are detailed design, inventory data, and construction contracts are collected in the construction division. The available data in different divisions are not shared which results in data duplication and inconsistency. The importance of IT in the architecture/engineering/construction industry has grown eponentially over the past years. Computer-aided design packages, scheduling and contract management software, document management system, and internet applications have demonstrated their abilities to improve operation, increasing both service quality and productivity (6). The direct benefits from RRAMS are the improved maintenance planning and a uniform quality and standard of maintenance for rural road assets throughout the country. The benefits of information technology can be measured by various methods. Three measures of information technology for information value at an organization level suggested by Brynjolfsson et al. (7)are:a) Productivity; b) Business Profitability; c) Consumer Surplus. Increased productivity will increase quality and reduce risk which is the primary returns for an IT investment (7). The measurement methods of Brynjolfsson et al. (7)are selected and adapted to measure the benefits of the RRAMS. The productivity indicator of the RRAMS is measured in terms of the higher number of rural roads that are above the minimum acceptable level. The budget distribution and allocation of RRAMS and RMS are compared for pavement maintenance since RMS was designed for only pavement management The RRAMS shows satisfaction results in the profitability indicator since it reduces the pavement maintenance budget by approimately 28 percent (3). The rural road user effects including energy savings, safety, and vehicle operating costs are used as a consumer surplus indicator. TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY A web-based information technology is used in the RRAMS development process. Data collection in terms of pavement condition and rural asset condition are collected on an annual basis. The data collection technique of RRAMS is modified and prepared for further development. The rural roads of ARD are grouped by the route number. The length of each route is divided into subsections. The length of each subsection is 200 meters. As shown in Figure 5, the middle grid table represents the 200-m sub-section of rural roads. The length of the subsection is divided into 10 meters. These grids are used as a referencing system for inspectors, engineers and planners to locate the defect areas. The defect areas include the pavement condition, traffic sign locations, shoulder defects, vegetation problems, and drainage system defects. The designed grids only provide a maimum of four-lane rural roads as shown in Figure 5 since most rural roads are composed of two lane carriageway. Linear Referencing System (LRS) is a way to identify a single location, that is, to reference a single position with respect to a known point (8). LRSs are used as part of the spatial data elements on transportation networks (8). There are several types of linear referencing methods (LRMs) such as Route-Milepost, Link-Note, X- Y Coordinate, and Address methods. In this research, the route-milepost is selected as the referencing system for rural road assets to complement the designed grids. Accurate positions of the assets can be quickly located which helps enhance the maintenance planning.

8 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 8 A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer-based system that stores, integrates, analyzes, and displays data with spatial references to the earth. GIS provides intelligent, accurate and timely information to various levels of users decision making (8). From the benefits of GIS, The RRAMS is designed to be compatible with GIS system. The LRM basis is intended to be the spatial backbone of the relational database and the GIS. SUMMARY Management system is an on-going process that requires a large amount of effort and participation from the public and all stakeholders. Rural roads are an essential transportation mode in developing countries such as Thailand. The main industries of rural citizens are agriculture and farming. There are approimately 50,000 km of rural road network in Thailand. An inadequate maintenance fund is a major obstacle to public agencies to maintain rural roads at a safety level. Due to the distinct traffic characteristics of rural roads, proper and systematic management is required to manage a large amount of maintenance budget. In the past year, the Thailand central government had been implementing the National Economic and Social Development Plan No.9 which aims to decentralize the government assets to the local government agency. The main objective of this plan is to improve the quality of life and living standard of people in terms of economic and social development in the rural areas. ARD is in the last phase of transferring their assets to different local government agencies. The central office will served as a monitor of the remote offices for maintenance quality and standards. ARD is divided into many divisions. Available information of rural assets are scattered in different divisions. The IT diffusion process is used to set plans and strategy for the system development. Data integration and sharing are required to improve the efficiency of ARD data collection process. The paper-based and computerized information are gathered and then structured using data taonomy. Data are grouped to identify what and where the information is available. Systematic data collection and data analysis are redesigned and modified to be up-to-date. A web-based information technology is used to complement the new NESDP that promotes the decentralization. A web-based IT is very efficient for data transfer, data accessibility which provides linkage between central and remote offices. In addition, new tools and technology are considered in this development. Data grids are incorporated into the redesigned inspection forms for all rural road assets in order to prepare all the collected information for the net step. Distresses and defects information of all rural road assets can be reported as locations or by its referencing system. This data grid is compatible with the route-mile post linear referencing system for GIS application. In addition, benefits of implementing a new system are measured in terms of its overall productivity and profitability. REFERENCES 1. Thailand National Economic and Social Development Plan, (in Thai), Accessed Aug. 1, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Asset Management Primer. Office of Asset Management Annual Report, U.S. Department of Transportation, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), and Department of Acceleration Rural Development (ARD), Road Maintenance Management System. ARD, Ministry of Interior, Thailand, Pena-mora, F.,Vadhavkar, S.,Perkins, E., and Weber, T. Information Technology Planning Framework for Large-Scale Projects. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Vol. 13, No. 4, Oct 1999, pp Date, C. J. An Introduction to Database System. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, New York, Venkatraman, N. Sloan Management. Beyond Outsourcing: Managing IT resources as a value center, Spring Brynjolfsson, E., and Hitt, L. Management Sciences. Parado lost? Firm-Level evidence on the returns to information systems spending, Vol. 42, No.4, 1996, pp Rasdorf, W., Shuller E., Poole, R., Abudayyeh, and O., Robson, F. Information Management at State Highway Department: Issues and Needs. Journal of Transportation Engineering, Vol. 126, No.2, Mar-Apr 2000, pp

9 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 9 Supporting System and Implementation Strategy LOCAL GOVERNMENT Mission AGENCY Policy and Process Composition of Local Government Agency FIGURE 1. Composition of local government agency

10 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 10 TABLE 1 An Eample of Data Taonomy of RRAMS RRAMS Asset Type Data Component Attribute Data Construction Maintenance Division Division Pavement Road-ID Distance Contract Information Construction Data Geometric Data Road-IDs Location of Roads Types of Pavements Distance Construction Companies Construction Year Budget Material Test Data Detailed Design Lane Width Design Speed Horizontal Curve Data Vertical Curve Data Rural Pavement Road-IDs Pavement Condition Inde Road Condition Data (PCI) International Roughness Inde Assets (IRI) Road-IDs Maintenance Data Repair Method Warranty Year Land Use Data Land Use Characteristics i Traffic Volume Data Road-IDs Traffic Volume i Vehicle Types i Types of Traffic Type-IDs Signs Types of Traffic Signs Traffic Sign Location Position Traffic Sign Reflectivity Level i Condition Data Level of Completion i Additional Sign Information i Remarks: the attribute data is available in the division i the new designed attribute of RRAMS

11 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 11 Input Resource ARD policy Hardware & Software Process Asset Condition of Local Government Agency 1 Asset Condition of Local Government Agency 2 Web-Based Technology Training CENTRAL DATA BANK (Rural Road Asset Management System) Report AMS analyzed Asset Condition of Local Government Agency n Fact Database Maintenance Planning Quality & Standard Increase Direct Benefits FIGURE 2 Components of RRAMS AMS = Asset Maintenance Management System

12 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 12 Input condition View AMS View reports AMS reports of asset for local each local all local Maintain System government government govern ment agencies agency agency Input User Eecutive Manager Administrator Local Manager FIGURE 3 Security levels of RRAMS

13 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 13 Contract Land Use Traffic Volume Maintenance Cost Detailed Design Construction Quality & Standard Specification Construction Division Economical Benefit Maintenance Division Maintenance Strategy Maintenance Planning Program Road Classification Rural Road Asset Inventory Data Historical Maintenance Data Pavement Condition Inde (PCI) Asset Condition Data Pavement Marking Traffic Sign Drainage System Concrete pavement Asphalt pavement Gravel Road Traffic Sign Traffic Light Guard Rail V-ditch U-ditch Asset Treatment Data FIGURE 4 Data architecture of RRAMS

14 Herabat, Amekudzi, Satirasetthavee 14 End Station DL SL A B C D SL DL Start Station Meters Geographic Information System (GIS) Road Boundary SL, SR = Left and Right Shoulder DL, DR = Left and Right Drainage System A, B, C, D = Traffic Lanes FIGURE 5 Linear referencing system (route-mile post) for GIS application