PAVEMENT DATA COLLECTION STRATEGY FOR

JKR MALAYSIA
Ir. Lai Khin Onn, Public Works Department, Malaysia

ABSTRACT

JKR Malaysia manages the periodic maintenance of the 15,000 kilometres Federal road
network by using a pavement management system called PAMS. PAMS (Pavement Appraisal
and Management Suite) is a derivative of HDM-III. However, the high cost of data collection
has created problems for JKR in sustaining the use of PAMS to provide value-for-money from
investing in the road network. A full consideration of data requirements was therefore seen as
essential as data collection costs dominate the implementation of pavement management
systems.

This paper examines the pavement data collection strategy employed by JKR Malaysia, which
aims to optimise the limited data collection budget by concentrating data collection efforts on
needy sections. Experiences related to the effectiveness of lower cost manual riding surveys,
the deployment of more expensive mechanical surveys and the tiering of data to allow
flexibility in the specification of data collection requirements for lower cost roads are
presented. Recommendations are then made as to how to optimise resources when faced with
resource constraints.
INTRODUCTION
Every year, the Public Works Department of Malaysia (JKR) devotes considerable resources
towards the routine and periodic maintenance of its 15,000 kilometres of Federal road network.
This network consists of approximately 8,000 km of primary roads and the remaining are
tertiary roads. The purpose of maintaining and improving the existing pavement is to enable its
continued use by traffic in an efficient and safe manner.

For that purpose, JKR uses a pavement management system called PAMS (Tai et al. 1995)
which carries out project level analysis and then aggregates the outcome to form network level
outputs. PAMS (Pavement Appraisal and Management Suite) was developed and calibrated by
JKR during the Malaysian National Axle Load Study. The software is microcomputer-based
and runs on a DOS platform.

PAMS is a third generation decision-support system capable of performing whole-life costing

of the road network under the user-specified environment over an evaluation period of 2 to 20
years (Robinson et al. 1998). It incorporates the pavement deterioration sub-model and the
vehicle operating cost sub-model from HDM-III (Watanada et al. 1987). The other sub-models
within PAMS can internally determine pavement thicknesses, model road user costs, determine
construction costs due to congestion, model work zone costs, determine construction costs and
assess the Net Present Value (NPV) for each maintenance policy selected. When modelling
under budget constraint, economic ranking using first year rate of return is used. Different
investment options or policies have to be set up by the user to arrive near the optimum. Policy
optimisation is through maximising the NPV.

This paper examines the pavement data collection strategy employed by JKR Malaysia, which
aims to optimise the limited data collection budget by concentrating data collection efforts on
needy sections. Experiences related to the effectiveness of cheaper manual riding surveys, the
deployment of more expensive mechanical surveys and the tiering of data to allow flexibility in
the specification of data collection requirements for lower cost roads are presented.
Recommendations are then made as to how to optimise resources when faced with resource
constraints.

BACKGROUND
In the past, JKR has often evaluated the performance of its existing pavement management
systems (PMS) on the basis of model sophistication, output generation and procurement costs.
This approach has led to many disappointments. A full consideration of the data requirements
is essential as the implementation costs of a PMS are dominated by the cost of annual data
collection. The JKR spends about 90% of the total implementation of PAMS on data collection,
or about 2% of the annual periodic maintenance budget required for the Federal road network.

The first PMS adopted by JKR, in 1985, was the BSM system (Burrow 1985a). BSM is a
standardised microcomputer-based pavement management system customised to form the
Malaysian Maintenance Management System. During its 4 month installation period, 14 JKR
technicians were trained over a 6 weeks period. Pavement surface distress data was collected
through manual walking surveys and data sheets. Although the consultants discovered that the
variability of the manual survey measurements between individual technicians was high, the
results (see Table 1) were in the opinion of the consultants, within the acceptable range
(Burrow 1985b).
 Table 1
Manual Walking Survey Results

Technician Areas of Deterioration Measured

Major (m2) Minor (m2)
A 102 2
B 65 37
C 102 90
D 79 66
E 116 58
F 61 20
G 46 45
H 68 40
I 61 68
J 71 24
K 83 55
L 70 21
Average (AVG) 77 44
Standard Deviation (SD) 19.57 23.85
SD/AVG 0.25 0.54

JKR district technicians were responsible for the collection of the pavement surface distress
data within their own jurisdiction. This data was subsequently coded into the computer and the
resulting soft copy sent to JKR headquarters for processing. However, insufficient, incomplete
and unreliable data were common. This led to scepticism regarding the quality of the BSM
output.

Feedback from the district technicians regarding problems encountered with the data collection
were as follows:
(i) the method employed to collect the data was tedious, with only about 4 km per day of
data able to be collected;
(ii) the procedures employed to collect data were too complicated to be sustainable with
local technicians, resulting in erroneous data and th requirement for too much training;
(iii) local technicians were reluctant to carry out the laborious manual surveys in the hot and
humid Malaysian climate (about 34°C); and
(iv) local technicians were unfamiliar with computer technology and encountered numerous
problems coding the field data.

The lack of sufficient and reliable data feeding into the BSM system at JKR headquarters meant
that senior management had doubts regarding the quality the system output. Feedback to the
districts could also not be made because of this, causing a breakdown in the whole process.
Further erosion of the quality of the data resulted as district engineers viewed the system as
uncompensated extra work. Despite attempts to keep the system operating, all districts had
finally ceased collecting data by 1990.
In 1993, JKR implemented PAMS. Unlike the decentralised nature of the previous system, the
core of the current system is operated at JKR headquarters. Data collection, processing and
recommendations resulting from the output were all the responsibility of the Road Maintenance
Unit at JKR headquarters. The recommended projects with their associated costs and other
details were then fed to the district engineers to support their decision-making.

In terms of data, the advantages over the previous system were as follows:
(i) the data collection could now be contracted out to a specialist consultant who could
better manage the work;
(ii) the release of the responsibility from district technicians to collect data meant that the
large resources previously associated with training programs were freed;
(iii) less interfacing resulted in less coordination and monitoring problems; and
(iv) the data did not have to be collected annually, as PAMS could project the future
condition of the pavement. A strategy to collect data on a rolling program of one-third of
the road network every year could be used.

However, PAMS, being a more sophisticated system, required not only much more data but
also much more sophisticated data. Suddenly, data collection costs which had not previously
been so obvious – owing to the District’s efforts at absorbing extra costs – came under scrutiny.
The costs of the data collection for the 15,000 km of Federal Trunk roads is currently at RM15
million or about RM5 million annually on a 3-year rolling program.

DATA REQUIREMENTS OF PAMS

PAMS caters for the three levels commonly applied in decision making within pavement
management:
(i) Strategy analysis for medium to long term planning,
(ii) Program analysis to prepare rolling work programs, and
(iii) Project analysis for detailed economic appraisal.

In PAMS, data requirements are consolidated into a single ASCII file called the engineering
link file. This assists in data coding by the data collection consultant who does not have the
PAMS software. The file contains 45 fields and all fields are mandatory with no default values
provided. Intervals for data collection may vary from 200 m to 99.99 km sections. However,
JKR generally uses 1 km long sections starting and ending at kilometre posts.

A brief description of the data requirements is as follows:

(i) inventory – section identifier, pavement type, carriageway indicator, pavement age,
number of bridge approaches, section length, pavement width for each lane, shoulder
widths, altitude, total rise per km, total fall per km, proportion of link length in rise,
curvature per km.
(ii) roughness – value for each lane in BI units.
(iii) surface distress – average rut depth, area of all cracking (crack widths > 3mm), pothole
area, ravelling area.
(iv) structural capacity – FWD maximum deflection, modulus of each pavement layer,
thickness of each pavement layer, binder content or surface treatment thickness.
DATA COLLECTION STRATEGY
To optimise data collection costs – whereby data collection efforts are concentrated on roads in
poorer condition – JKR specifies that the data is collected on a two-staged basis, with 1st Stage
data suitable for Strategy analysis, and 2nd Stage data for Program or Project analysis. The key
difference between the Strategy and the Program or Project analysis is the level of detail with
which data is defined. Strategy analysis data is more generic in nature and characteristics can
simply be specified in terms of ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘poor’. The Information Quality Level (IQL)
required is at IQL3 to IQL4 (Paterson 1991).

The data collection strategy as detailed in the Terms of Reference (JKR Roads Branch 1998) to
the specialist consultant is as follows:

(i) 1st stage data requirements is in the form of a matrix template defining the characteristics
of the road network in terms of representative sections. This matrix is defined from a user
specified combination of selected parameter levels as shown in Table 2. Collection of
data in the 1st Stage is through a manual riding survey, where a trained JKR inspector is
driven in a car travelling at normal traffic speeds over the whole network. The trained
inspector subjectively estimates the condition of each section of the road network in
terms of roughness and cracking using a rating of ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘poor’. Traffic for
each section is specified in terms of ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’ by referring to published
traffic census data.

Each section is then assigned a Priority Rating calculated from its corresponding sum of
Priority Values based on its condition and hierarchy. The links with many sections
having relatively high Priority Ratings are further investigated in the 2nd Stage. The use
of a computer, and indications of the Priority Ratings of individual sections on a road
map, greatly assisted in deciding which links should be surveyed further.

Table 2
1st Stage Survey Matrix

Parameter Assessment Priority

1. Roughness Good IRI ≤ 2.8 1
Fair ≥ 2.8 IRI ≤ 4.6 2
Bad IRI ≥ 4.6 3
2. Cracking Good ≤ 15% cracking 1
Fair ≥ 15% cracking ≤ 25% 2
Bad ≥ 25% cracking 3
3. Traffic Low ≤ 10,000 ADT 1
Medium ≥ 10,000 ADT ≤ 20,000 2
High ≥ 20,000 ADT 3

(ii) The 2nd Stage survey is carried out on about one-third of the network by a specialist
consultant using objective mechanised surveys. The roads requiring a 2nd Stage survey
are determined by JKR based on an analysis of the estimated cracking, ride quality and
road hierarchy of the network surveyed in the 1st Stage.
 The 2nd Stage mechanised survey consists of:
(a) High-Speed Data Acquisition Vehicle to capture riding quality, rutting,
alignment, visual condition and inventory.
(b) Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) testing at 0.5 lane-km intervals along
each carriageway, meaning that four test points are measured for each
kilometre of each carriageway. For dual carriageways, testing is conducted
only in the slow lane.
(c) Coring and Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) testing at 2 km intervals of
each carriageway.
(d) Randomly selected coring of asphalt for laboratory indirect tensile testing
to determine the resilient modulus.

ACCURACY OF THE MANUAL RIDING SURVEY

JKR introduced the manual riding survey in November 1998. Two JKR engineers, trained and
experienced in auditing previous pavement data collection contracts, were despatched to
simultaneously carry out manual riding survey over the whole primary Federal road network in
Peninsular Malaysia. The survey was carried out with the inspectors seated beside the driver on
the front of two Mitsubishi Pajeros, one covering the north and the other the south, while
travelling at normal traffic speeds. The survey, which covered 6,000 km, was completed in
three weeks. From that, one-quarter, or about 1,600 km, of the road network was selected for
mechanised surveys.

The accuracy of the data estimated was then compared to that captured using a video camera
mounted on a High-Speed Data Acquisition Vehicle which was firstly randomly checked and
determined as generally satisfactory. Assuming that the machine-based data were accurate, the
results of the manual riding survey were then compared section by section. A spreadsheet was
set up to assist in making the comparison.

Overall, the manual riding survey results for the 1,600 kilometres selected links showed that:
(a) for cracking extent estimation, 79% of the sections were accurate, while;
(b) for roughness estimation, only 54% were accurate.

Most of the differences or errors in the cracking extent estimation were related to the fact that
pavements estimated as ‘fair’ were actually ‘bad’. For the roughness estimation, most of the
pavements were estimated as having a higher roughness than in fact was the case, i.e. those
estimated as ‘fair’ were actually ‘good’ and those estimated as ‘bad’ were actually ‘fair’.

DISCUSSION
A staged data collection strategy requires the deployment of expensive mechanised surveys to
optimise data collection costs. To identify the more defective sections, JKR had to weigh the
appropriateness of using either a manual walking survey, a manual riding survey or a High-
Speed Data Acquisition Vehicle.

Collecting data using the labour intensive and slow manual method for the 1st Stage was a
waste of resources. Earlier experiences during the implementation of the BSM system had
highlighted the problems associated with manual walking surveys. 1st Stage data should be
collected using a procedure that involves the minimum time and the minimum resources. After
all, its aim is simply to provide a ‘provisional’ priority list. A fast and cheaper manual riding
survey can be sufficient. Using the High Speed Data Acquisition Vehicle will be expensive as
other pavement parameters will also be simultaneously captured and there will be post-
processing involved.

Although not as accurate as initially hoped, the results indicated that manual riding surveys can
be used to capture 1st Stage data. Estimation of the extent of cracking can be affected by the
vehicle speed, the angle of view from the windscreen, weather conditions, the direction of
sunlight, eyesight, concentration and experience. However, with sufficient training, satisfactory
estimations can be achieved. The less than satisfactory estimation of roughness can be
attributed to the difficulty in estimating the roughness over a long 1 km stretch and the varying
survey speeds. JKR will have to examine the possibility of fitting a mechanical RTRMMS into
a vehicle to overcome this problem.

Based on the satisfactory outcome of the manual riding survey trial, it is recommended that
JKR adopts a suitable staged rolling program for future pavement data capture of the primary
and secondary road network as follows:
Stage 1: manual riding survey of each link at IQL-III and ratings of ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘bad’
assigned equally to each one-third of the network.
Stage 2: mechanised high-speed survey of each section at IQL-II on a rolling a 3-year cycle,
starting with the sections rated ‘poor’ to ‘fair’.
Stage 3: follow up FWD and coring/DCP testing of the highest priority sections which
would form 200% of the next annual maintenance budget, resulting in probable 5 year cycle.

For the tertiary road network, a suitable staged rolling program for data collection is
recommended as follows:

Stage 1 : manual riding survey of each link at IQL-III to determine ratings of ‘good’, ‘fair’
or ‘bad’ assigned equally to each one-third of the network.
Stage 2 : follow-up mechanised high-speed survey of each section at IQL-II on a rolling 5-
year cycle, starting with those links rated ‘poor’ to ‘fair’

CONCLUSION
Collecting pavement data on a rolling program is popular among many Road Agencies. Staging
the rolling program by introducing manual riding surveys can further optimise costs because it
staggers the more expensive surveys to longer cycles. The detailed strategy will vary according
to the hierarchy of the road network, the length of the road network, available resources,
budget, and the foreign exchange situation. An extensive primary road network may justify the
use of expensive high-speed surveys. On the other hand, a small tertiary road network of a few
hundred kilometres only may only require manual riding surveys.

The problems associated with manual walking surveys experienced not only by JKR Malaysia
during the implementation of BSM, but also by PWD Singapore (Narayanan et al. 1992), have
made this type of survey highly unpopular in JKR. There appears to be no alternative but to use
the expensive high-speed mechanised surveys at the present time. Using appropriate
technology, options such as fitting a locally-produced vehicle with a locally-produced video
camera, rut bar and RTRRMS may be a viable, low-cost, alternative in the future.
REFERENCES
Burrow, J. and Partners (1985a). System BSM Manual : Malaysian Pavement Management
System.

Burrow, J. and Partners (1985b). Malaysian Pavement Management System, System BSM
Final Implementation Report.

JKR Roads Branch (1998). Terms of Reference for the collection of engineering link data for
federal trunk roads in Peninsular Malaysia. JKR Malaysia.

Narayanan, N., Kennedy, C.K., Butler, I.C. and Phang, P. (1992). A Pavement Management
System for Singapore. Proc. 7th REAAA Conference, Singapore.

Paterson, W.D.O. (1991). Choosing an appropriate information system for road management.
19th World Road Congress of PIARC, Marrakesh, Morocco.

Robinson, R., Danielson, U. and Snaith, M. (1998). Road Maintenance Management: Concepts
and Systems. McMillan Press Ltd.

Tai, M.C., Abdul Wahid, M. and Lai, K.O. (1995). Pavement Appraisal and Management
Suite. Proc. 8th REAAA Conference, Taipei.

Watanada, T., Paterson, W.D.O., Bhandari, A., Harral, C., Dhareshwar, A.M. and Tsunokawa,
K. (1987). The Highway Design and Maintenance Standards Model. The World Bank,
Washington D.C.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Ir. Lai Khin Onn is currently attached to the Maintenance Management Unit of the Roads
Branch of the Public Works Department of Malaysia (JKR). His responsibilities include
managing the national pavement and slope data collection program for the Federal roads and
also software development, data analysis and works programming. He has vast experience in
road maintenance management systems and has an M.Sc. in Highway Management.