Cost effective method to develop national road inventory database

Abstract

This research was focused to find out a method to develop or update the National Road Inventory Database in a cost effective manner. The main cost sensitive factor for the development of Inventory Database was identified as the Inventory Survey. Any revision on existing Inventory Databases or originating New Databases should be done with the completion of an inventory survey. The method adopted to do the survey will determine the accuracy of the data and the cost. For the complete Road Inventory Database, the inventory survey should be carried out to cover all links in the network. In general the road networks are complicated and it is difficult to find a method to travel on each and every link without having to back track. Sometimes survey team compelled to travel several times on same road section just to reach other links without collecting any data (i.e. idle traveling). It was experienced that a survey trip can be carried out in two different ways such as the origin and destinations as the same point or origin and destination as two different points. According to the inventory survey carried out by Transportation Engineering Division of University of Moratuwa, it was found that approximately half of the total cost of inventory survey occurred for the idle traveling. If the road inventory survey can be carried out with minimum idle traveling that method will be the most effective method to carry out the survey. Hence under this research, it was found a method which minimizes the 'idle traveling' by considering the both cases of survey trip patterns.