Why Was Maintain-AI Developed?
The Problem With Current Pavement Maintenance Assessments
Transportation agencies globally spend billions of dollars annually on pavement maintenance and rehabilitation to meet public, legislative and agency expectations.
The effectiveness of various pavement rehabilitation treatments on a pavement’s service life is dependent on the timely identification of defects.
The optimal time to apply a treatment is not solely when the greatest improvement in condition is realised but when the greatest improvement in condition is realised at the lowest cost.
Put simply, deferring the consistent inspection and timely maintenance of road infrastructure will result in proportionately greater rehabilitation costs at a later date.
But if you only inspect a road network once per year or even less which is currently normal practice, (many road authorities actually only review their entire road network over 2-3 years), it is challenging, if not impossible, to actually understand the exact health state of a road and then select the optimum treatment to maintain or prolong their serviceability. Good money is currently spent on expensive limited inspections and making decisions too late for a particular cost-effective road maintenance treatment.
Critical Concept
Pavement Cracking Theory
Cracks Will Occur
Cracks Will Grow
Cracks Will Worsen
Thus, Cracks Will Accelerate Pavement Deterioration Exponentially if Untreated Timely.
The problem is that the cost of road maintenance represents a significant amount of public funds and it currently takes too much time and effort to identify pavement defects.
The process should be less complex where time and money can be better spent on repairing and maintaining pavement networks rather than spending money on analysis paralysis.
Balancing Performance, Cost and Risk with AI Road Surveys
Why Consistent Inspections with Maintain-AI is a 'Smarter' Strategy
“There are two ways to measure the condition of a road network. The first way is to call it the Squeaky Wheel, sit back and wait for the complaints. The more complaints, the worse the condition of the roads. The second way is to use a more thorough, comprehensive and pro-active approach to review the entire road network.”
OGRA’S MILESTONES | V9#4 | www.ogra.org
Critical Concept
Pavement Deterioration Theory
Prompt attention to minor defects will prevent the more costly repairs of major defects and obviate the development of conditions likely to be hazardous or inconvenient to road users.
Maintain-AI Supports Organisations Make Evolution Changes in the Management of Pavement Assets and Networks
Current Pavement Assessments!
Current pavement assessments, often relying on infrequent and expensive methods, leave significant gaps in understanding the true 'health' state of a road network.
Maintain-AI provides an industry leading solution to help users responsible for road network management optimise the use of available funding, better communicate funding needs and more objectively assess, monitor and support the management of your entire pavement network; be it for pavement distresses and/or accounting for the performance of other associated assets and elements across the road network.
Maintain-AI's AI solution supports detailed assessments of pavements and network infrastructure, enabling the classification of issues into actionable categories for informed decision-making which:
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need no immediate maintenance and therefore, no immediate expenditures
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need minor or routine maintenance and immediate expenditures; (prioritise immediate, cost-effective interventions to keep them ‘good’)
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demand preventive maintenance activities such as asphalt overlay, seal etc., maximising cost-effectiveness and delaying the need for more intensive work.
(Maintain-AI provides guidance on likely treatment costs derived from an almost 800 project case study database and can provide cost-benefit analysis where roads within the network can be listed in order of suggested maintenance priority)
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need major rehabilitation or reconstruction
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require more detailed inspection (flag areas requiring further investigation and more detailed assessments).
These last two (2) scenarios are identified pavements that have deteriorated to the point that maintenance is no longer cost-effective and further work, often major, is required to raise its performance to an acceptable user level.