A pavement condition forecasting tool is now available that allows county road agencies to predict future conditions on their roadway networks. Using the new tool, agencies can generate maps and reports showing how roadway conditions will look in different construction scenarios decades into the future.
The project, sponsored by the Minnesota Local Road Research Board, augmented an inexpensive web-based roadway inventory management tool known as GRIT—Geographic Roadway Inventory Tool. Investigators from the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University, which developed and manage GRIT, incorporated the pavement condition forecasting model into the tool.
Counties can enter construction planning data into GRIT, and the new module generates predictions of pavement conditions for 35 years into the future based on deterioration models and the most recent traffic and pavement condition data. The system generates performance graphs and maps of pavement condition, age, traffic and other data. When users update construction plans, the maps, graphs, and projections update accordingly.
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