Investigation of Methods & Approaches for Collecting & Recording Highway Inventory Data

Principal Investigator
Dr. Huaguo Zhou

Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Shunfu Hu, Dr. Jie Gong, Mark Grinter

Funded By
Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and Illinois Center for Transportation ( ICT ), $215,000

Start Date
1/1/2012

End Date
6/30/2013

Summary of Project
Implementing the recently-published Highway Safety Manual (HSM) methods will allow IDOT to improve the safety of Illinois roads. However, the highway inventory data needed for the HSM is not currently stored in IDOT databases. IDOT must collect and store highway inventory data in order to implement HSM and other functions within the Bureau of Safety Engineering, other IDOT offices, or local agencies. The primary objective of the proposed research is to identify available techniques and methodologies for collecting and storing highway inventory data and to comparatively evaluate selected methodologies.

A two-phase approach is proposed for this study. Phase 1 will determine the database requirements and evaluate available data collection and analysis techniques. Four major tasks will be conducted during this phase: (1) Identify the input data needed for HSM models; (2) Conduct a thorough literature review and a nationwide survey to summarize the available techniques, costs, benefits, logistics, legal issues, etc., associated with all relevant methods of collecting, analyzing, storing, retrieving, and viewing the relevant data; (3) Conduct laboratory testing of promising highway inventory data collection techniques; and (4) Provide a summary of the above information with recommendations for one or more techniques to evaluate data collection and analysis techniques through field studies on IDOT roads. Phase 2 will conduct field tests of recommended candidate techniques on IDOT roads. Six major tasks will be conducted in this phase: (1) Identify a set of roadway segments and sites that represent the challenges faced in a statewide implementation; (2) Conduct field experiments on these road segments and sites to evaluate the candidate techniques’ ability to collect required roadway inventory data; (3) Reduce the data collected from each of these proposed methods into the designed database; (4) Conduct foot-on-ground surveys of these locations to verify assets for comparison with data collected by alternate technologies; (5) Perform an assessment of data quality, collection and analysis productivity, utility, and cost to determine the most advantageous technique, or hybrid combination of techniques, for IDOT roads; and (6) Summarize the findings and recommendations into a final report and a technical presentation.