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American Association of State Highway and Transportation OfficialsSpecial Committee on Research and InnovationFY2021 NCHRP PROBLEM STATEMENT OUTLINE1. Problem TitleEvaluate Federal Measures and Metrics for Pavements 2. BackgroundThe Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) transportation bill established federal regulations that require each State Department of Transportation (DOT) to develop a Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP), and implement Performance Management. These regulations require all DOTs to utilize nationally defined performance measures for pavements on the National Highway System (NHS). These nationally defined performance measures (referred as PM2 hereafter) are aimed at providing nationally consistent metrics for DOTs to measure condition, establish targets, assess progress toward targets, and report on condition and performance. Furthermore, Federal measures provide the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) the ability to better communicate a national performance story and to more reliably assess the impacts of Federal funding investments.State DOTs are expected to use the information and data generated from these Federal measures to inform their transportation planning and programming decisions. However, State DOTs are finding discrepancies between pavement conditions from PM2 measures as compared to their internal, state-developed measures. This discrepancy hampers the adoption of the PM2 pavement measures as the primary input into condition summary reporting and pavement investment prioritization and decision-making. In other words, State DOTs do not have confidence in the Federal measures, primarily because these measures cannot be used to inform decision-making processes such as investment decisions. Furthermore, the resulting differences between state metric-determined and federal metric-determined network conditions creates confusion among the public, senior executive staff, and legislative bodies, along with non-DOT owners of NHS assets. As mentioned before, FHWA needs to collect consistent Federal measures across all State DOTs to assess the impact of Federal funding investment at the national level. However, State DOTs have been collecting pavement performance data for decades and used this data to inform their pavement management systems and processes to address specific needs. Typically, the data collection processes cover state-owned pavements and not only NHS pavements, which brings another layer of inconsistency. For this reason, there is a need for more flexible metrics that can be aligned to performance measures currently used by State DOTs and support decision-making processes such as investment decisions3. Literature Search SummaryThere are a significant number of publications related to the definition of performance targets (e.g., NCHRP report 551 and NCHRP 20-24(37) series) and target setting (e.g., NCHRP 666). However, there is very limited literature on the comparative analysis of state and Federal measures. NCHRP 20-24(124), entitled “Performance Management Reporting Peer Exchange,” facilitated a peer exchange between state DOT and FHWA personnel to present and explain differences between state metric-determined and federal metric-determined network conditions. This project appears to be a first attempt to capture information related to this research topic. The Federal rule actually includes some discussions from comments received from stakeholders that foresaw potential discrepancies (e.g., some comments focused on cracking percentage which only considers the load-related cracks inside the wheel path without differentiating severity levels). Despite some sporadic efforts, such as a study performed in Tennessee to correlate PM2 measures with state performance indices (1), there is not a nation-wide analysis comparing Federal and State measures. At the Federal level, it is worth mentioning an on-going project supported by FHWA on the identification and deployment of leading indicators to monitor and adjust national transportation performance measure targets. The purpose of this project is to support FHWA in identifying, analyzing, communicating, and deploying leading indicators to monitor and adjust performance measure targets. As opposed to traditional lagging indicators (like the ones included in PM2 measures), leading indicators are aimed at showing what a situation will be like in the future, rather than showing what it is like now or has been like in previous weeks, months, etc.4. Research ObjectiveThe objective to this research is to:Evaluate current federal pavement condition measures (Ride Quality, Rutting, Faulting, and Cracking), performance thresholds, and overall performance measure with respect to:Consistency – across various pavement types, network designations, and lane configurationsUsefulness – in network-level pavement condition summary and asset management decision-making, prioritization, and forecasts; andAlignment – with state established pavement condition metricsProvide recommendations to improve existing measures and/or identify metrics that better reflect pavement failure mechanisms and enhance decision-making taking into account not only the assessment of current and future condition but also their implications in economic analyses of long-term maintenance and rehabilitation. Evaluate pavement leading indicators as an alternative to the current version of the PM2.Identify and address in detail specific challenges for each condition measure (Ride Quality, Rutting, Faulting, and Cracking) for consistency, including thresholds. For example, determine if wheel path cracking considerations could be revised to provide more consistent results across pavement types (e.g. composite, concrete) and pavement widths (e.g. <12 ft.)Evaluate structural capacity indicators for potential consideration as a Federal measure. Proposed research activities include:Conduct outreach interviews to State DOTs and evaluate DOT publications (e.g TAMPs) to:Capture current uses for federal and state-specific pavement condition metrics and their relative strengths and weakness with respect to identified network-level usesQuantify the extent of the State DOTs’ differences with current federal pavement metricsCapture alternative procedures states are using to determine and communicate pavement condition and/or failure as well as network-level decision-makingSource State DOT condition data sets, including corresponding state and federal ratings and network-level pavement maintenance recommendationsConduct a comparative analysis between state and federal measures and determine the ability to utilize federal measures to replicate network-level decisions.Evaluate alternative methods of federal measure with best practices of state measures to develop a list of alternative methods that could be used for pavement management measures and meet both State and Federal needs.Provide summary and comparison of current vs. alternative methods with respect to evaluation criteria at national and individual state levelsProvide guidance on how to enhance the utility of current federal measures and/or condition thresholds and recommend revisions in a format useful to adoption into the HPMS Field ManualDesired products include:Evaluation of federal measure with respect to consistency, usefulness, and alignmentGuidance on how to increase the utility of current metrics and/or thresholdsRecommendations for revised pavement condition metrics and/or thresholdsRecommendations for updated HPMS Field Manual5. Urgency and Potential BenefitsBecause DOTs are only two years into implementing the pavement performance measures and metrics, the urgency is great to make sure the measures in use are as meaningful, consistent and implementable as possible. Currently, the performance measures have not achieved widespread use as the primary performance criteria for decision-making, leading to two sets of metrics being used by many agencies. In addition, DOTs must make performance predictions and justifications based on the federal performance measures. Making any changes to the measures as soon as possible will allow DOTs to build up datasets on which to base predictions of future performance.Potential benefits to improving the federal pavement performance measures and metrics include:Metrics that better define pavement failure mechanisms and therefore conditionMetrics that result in more consistent results across pavement types and pavement widthsBroader adoption of the measures by DOTs as part of decision-making criteriaLess confusion among the public, senior executive staff, and legislative bodies, along with non-DOT owners of NHS assets by having one set of metrics instead of two (federal and state-specific)6. Implementation Considerations and SupportersThis topic is of significant interest to AASHTO, TRB, and the DOTs, having ranked third amongst potential NCHRP topics in the recent TAM Research Prioritization conducted as part of the 2020 Mega Meeting of the AASHTO Subcommittee on Asset Management, in cooperation with the TRB Asset Management Committee (AJE30).The following are organizations and contacts who may be interested in using the results of the research and supporting its dissemination:AASHTO Committee on Performance-based Management: Tim Henkel, Chair (Minnesota DOT, (651) 366-4829, tim.henkel@state.mn.us), Matt Hardy (AASHTO, (202) 624-3625, mhardy@)AASHTO Subcommittee on Asset Management: Matt Haubrich, Chair (Iowa DOT, (515) 233-7902, matthew.haubrich@iowadot.us)FHWA Office of Asset Management: Steve Gaj (FHWA, (202) 366-1336, stephen.gaj@) Tim Henkel, TAM Expert Task Group Chair (see contact above)TRB Asset Management Committee (ABC40): Tim Henkel, Chair (see contact above) 7. Recommended Research Funding and Research PeriodRecommended funding: $500,000.Recommended research period: 12 to 18 months8. Problem Statement Author(s)The following individuals contributed to development of this problem statement:Louis Feagans, Indiana DOT, (317) 412-1670, lfeagans@indot.Laura Heckel, Illinois DOT, (217) 785-2791, laura.heckel@Juan Porras-Alvarado, WSP, (212) 465 5663, juan.porras-alvarado@Cristina Torres-Machi, University of Colorado Boulder, (303) 735-4609, cristina.torresmachi@colorado.edu9. Others Supporting the Problem StatementTBD 10. Potential Panel MembersTBD 11. Person Submitting the Problem StatementTBD ................
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