Asset Management Data Practices for Supporting Project Selection Decisions

Abstract

Transportation agencies engage in extensive data collection activities to support their decision processes at various levels, but not all data collected supply useful information. This article summarizes research aimed at formally identifying links between data collection and the supported decision processes, particularly at the level of project selection. The aim was to help transportation agencies optimize their data collection and cut down data collection and management costs. The methodology included a comprehensive literature review that collected information from various academic and industry sources around the world and the development of a Web survey that was e-mailed to specific expert individuals within the 50 U.S. Departments of Transportation and Puerto Rico. The responses obtained from the Web survey were analyzed statistically and combined with the additional resources to extract conclusions about the current state of the practice and develop data collection recommendations in the form of a proposed stepwise framework.