Research Trends and Accomplishments
Asset Management of Road Facilities
Research Coordinator for Road Affairs, Road Department
1. Need for Asset Management of Road Facilities
Rapid progress in the provision of roads, harbors,
communication systems, and other public infrastructures in
Japan during the latter half of the twentieth century has
established a vast quantity of infrastructure of these kinds
which, although still behind that of the industrialized coun-
tries of Europe and America, has reached the level necessary
to support the livelihood and economic activities of the
people in Japan. It is important that we preserve and effec-
tively utilize this vast quantity of public infrastructure that
can be described as the assets of the Japanese people far into
the future.
As Table 1 shows, extensive networks of paved roads
and many bridges, tunnels, and other road facilities have
been provided, and a study of the ages of bridges shows that
many were constructed between 1960 and 1990. These will
deteriorate at about the same time, accompanied by the
sudden arrival of a period when many road facilities must be
repaired or replaced. It is essential to maintain such road
facilities at the same time as we guarantee that they continue
to provide a level of service that will satisfy road users. And
considering the fact that future road management will be
implemented with limited financial and human resources as
a consequence of harsh financial circumstances facing the
national and regional governments, road management must
be conducted more rationally and systematically than it has
in the past. Systems necessary to do so must be established
at once. A system of this kind is called an Asset
Management System (AMS).
This report describes the concepts, structure, necessary
technologies, and development policies concerning the Asset
Management System: a tool for the systematic management
of road facilities: mainly the vast quantities of gradually
deteriorating paved roads, bridges and tunnels.
2. Concepts of Asset Management in Other Countries
(1) Definition of asset management
Because the term, asset management of road facilities, is
not yet firmly established in Japan, I will introduce the way
that the asset management of roads is described and defined
Table 1. Stock of Road Facilities Provided
Total length Number of • As of April 1999
(km) locations
• Total length of paving
Paved roads 279,945 excludes simple
paving
Bridges 4,070 51,922 • Bridges include only
permanent bridges of
Tunnels 2,636 7,884 15 m and over
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OHNISHI Hirofumi
in Europe and America where road provision is more
advanced than in Japan.
The Asset Management Task Force of the American
Public Works Association describes it as "----- a method-
ology needed by those who are responsible for efficiently
allocating generally insufficient funds amongst valid and
competing needs."
And AUSTROADS (organization formed by road
departments of each state of Australia and New Zealand)
defines it under "Strategy for Improving Asset Management
Practice" as "----- a comprehensive and structured approach
to the long-term management of assets as tools for the effi-
cient and effective delivery of community benefits."
As a definition limited to roads, Project Description of
Asset Management Systems announced by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states,
"Asset Management ----- goes beyond the traditional
management practice of examining singular systems within
the road networks, i.e., pavements, bridges, etc., and looks at
the universal system of a network of roads and all of its
components to allow comprehensive management of limited
resources. Through proper asset management, governments
can improve program and infrastructure quality, increase
information accessibility and use, enhance and sharpen deci-
sion-making, make more effective investments and decrease
overall costs, including the social and economic impacts of
road crashes."
In its "Blueprint for Developing and Implementing an
Asset Management System," the Asset Management Task
Force of the New York State Department of Transportation
states, "In the transportation world, asset management is
defined as a systematic process of operating, maintaining,
and upgrading transportation assets cost-effectively. It
combines engineering and mathematical analyses with sound
business practice and economic theory. The total asset
management concept expands the scope of conventional
infrastructure management systems by addressing the human
element and other support assets as well as the physical plant
(e.g., highway, transit systems, airports, etc.). Asset manage-
ment systems are goal-driven and, like the traditional plan-
ning process, include components for data collection,
strategy evaluation, program development, and feedback.
The asset management model explicitly addresses the inte-
gration of decisions made across all program areas. Its
purpose is simple - to maximize benefits of a transportation
program to its customers and users, based on well-defined
goals and with available resources."
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
states that, "Asset Management is an improved way of doing

business that responds to an environment of increasing
system demands, aging infrastructure, and limited resources.
Asset Management also provides the ability to show how,
when, and why resources were committed."
To summarize the above, the goals of road asset manage-
ment are minimizing the life cycle cost of managing deterio-
rating road facilities (including construction costs) while
maintaining the level of services that should be provided to
road users with limited financial and human resources, main-
taining the existing road assets in good condition, and clearly
explaining these activities to the public. By concretely
putting this into practice, an ex post facto maintenance is
replaced by the management method of planned and preven-
tive maintenance.
(2) Asset management and depreciation
Statement No. 34, "Basic Financial Statements for State
and Local Governments" of the Governmental Accounting
Standards Board (GASB34), issued in June 1999 states that
the assessed values of capital such as road and other public
capital shall be included in financial reports. It stipulates that
the assessments of capital be done by the depreciation
method, but in cases where this public capital is managed
using the following asset management system and the assets
are maintained in the state they were in when constructed, it
is not necessary to consider their depreciation.
- Have an up-to-date inventory of assets;
- Perform condition assessment of the infrastructure assets at
least once every 3 years, and summarize the results using a
measurement scale; and
- Estimate the annual amount required to maintain and
preserve the infrastructure assets at the condition level
originally established for those assets.
The announcement of GASB34 gave the state and
regional governments the opportunity to try and introduce
asset management. Officials of the FHWA in charge of asset
management have referred to this, stating, "If GASB34 is not
followed, asset management by regional governments will
be considered to be incorrectly performed and, for example,
it will have an impact on assessments of the bonds issued by
the regional governments."
3. Structure of an Asset Management System
(1) Road facility management activities
The road facility management procedure is, as shown by
Fig. 1, inspecting and surveying road facilities, assessing
their soundness, predicting their deterioration, and esti-
mating their life cycle costs (LCC), and preparing and imple-
menting plans for their repair and reconstruction. Inspections
of road facilities obtain reports on their soundness. For
example, an inspection of the main girders of a bridge
reveals the degree of deterioration of its paint, corrosion of
its steel, and the presence/absence of cracks. The soundness
(or degree of deterioration) of the facility from the perspec-
tive of safety, durability, etc., is evaluated based on these
inspection data. Next, future changes in soundness (or
progress of deterioration) are predicted taking account of its
present degree of soundness, the load, temperature,
57
Research Trends and Accomplishments
humidity, and other external disturbances that will influence
the facility, and its past repair history. Then the total life
cycle costs of the facility are estimated by hypothesizing
future repair (or reconstruction) performed appropriately at
suitable times based on the results of a prediction of its dete-
rioration. It is important to build a data base of information
necessary for the above process: costs and effects of various
kinds of repair work (degree of restoration of soundness of
the facility), sustainability of its effects, etc. Finally some
repair scenarios are prepared by varying the repair period
and method, and new plans for the repair or reconstruction
of the facility that minimize the LCC calculated for these
scenarios are prepared and implemented.
Although it varies according to the type of facility,
almost no facility deterioration predictions and LCC assess-
ments are now performed. And road facility soundness
assessments as they are now performed are qualitative
assessments that can only determine if repair is necessary;
they do not quantitatively and objectively assess soundness.
But paving maintenance support systems (PMS) have been
used to predict the degree of deterioration of existing road
surfaces for a few years based on results of soundness
assessments that are qualitative to a certain degree. Various
kinds of technologies are used for these activities, and the
information obtained by these activities is accumulated in
data bases.
(2) Asset management to minimize life cycle costs
When the above data base has been prepared, the devel-
opment of road facility inspection technologies, soundness
assessment technologies, deterioration prediction technolo-
gies based on this data base will be encouraged, and these
technologies will be used to rationally perform the above
activities so that roads will be managed more systematically.
Systematically carrying out the above series of activities
including these technologies and the data base is what this
report calls an asset management system. The goal is to
operate this system to minimize the life cycle costs of road
facility management under conditions guaranteeing that road
facilities provide road users with satisfactory services. This
system is, above all, a support tool to help road managers
Inspections and surveys
Assessment of soundness
Prediction of deterioration
Road Management
Support System/
Estimation of LCC Data Base
Proposal of repair/
reconstruction plan
Implementation of repair/
reconstruction plan
Fig. 1. Road Facility Management Activities and Support
System.
 Research Trends and Accomplishments
perform their management tasks, and road managers use this
system to make final decisions concerning road manage-
ment. The life cycle costs include internal costs-the facility
construction, maintenance, repair, and reconstruction costs-
and external costs that result from traffic congestion during
repair work execution and road traffic noise while the facili-
ties are in use. In fact, future costs cannot be compared with
each other as they are, they need to be converted into the
present values using the social discount rate so that they can
be compared with each other.
(3) External costs
One representative external cost is the loss caused by
traffic congestion that occurs where road facilities are
repaired or reconstructed (also called road user cost). For
example, deterioration of viaducts on heavily used urban
expressways in the Tokyo and Osaka regions is far
advanced, but large-scale and long term reconstruction
works can not be done, because they would cause extensive
congestion extending into nearby roads, resulting in serious
losses. Therefore, small-scale repair works must be done as
necessary to minimize their impacts on traffic and lower
losses caused by roadwork congestions incurred by the
works.
4. Technologies Required for an Asset Management
System and Development Approaches
(1) Facility inspection technologies
Because the soundness of road fatalities is evaluated
based on inspection results, it is important to prepare items
that can be used to correctly evaluate facility soundness
along with inspection methods that can obtain information
that represents these objectively and quantitatively: cracking,
rutting, smoothness, and the slipperiness, water permeability,
and sound absorption properties for pavements; corrosion
and cracking of main girders and cracking of deck slabs for
bridges; separation, spalling, and water leakage of lining
concrete for tunnels (Fig. 2). This is now done primarily by
visual inspections and hammering inspections, but non-
destructive inspection technologies should be developed so
that objective and quantitative inspection data can be
obtained using optical fiber sensors, electromagnetic waves,
etc.
Laser displacement
Pulse camera gauges Distance meter HMI light
Linear projector
Layout of measuring instruments on ROADRECON
Fig. 2. Road Surface Condition Measurement Vehicle.
And continuous monitoring technologies using informa-
tion technology (IT) or other technology that can assess the
state of road facilities frequently between regular inspections
should be developed.
Other challenges that are as important as the develop-
ment of inspection technologies are guaranteeing the quality
of the inspection data that are obtained by these inspection
technologies, and the establishment of training and qualifica-
tion systems for the inspectors are required.
(2) Soundness assessment technologies
Among road facilities, present soundness evaluations of
bridges and tunnels classify their soundness at several grades
based on inspection data and are still qualitative. And
because the evaluation results are dependent on the inspec-
tors and inspection environment, they are not sufficiently
objective. In the case of pavement, quantitative assessment
indices for cracking, rutting and flatness are set and pave-
ments are evaluated based on these indices.
It is, therefore, necessary to set quantitative assessment
indices and assessment standards that can appropriately
represent the degree of deterioration of facilities under
factors that influence the safety, durability, and driving
performance that road facilities should provide (on steel
bridges, corrosion and cracking of the main girder (Fig. 3),
and in tunnels, cracking, separation, leaking, etc. of the
lining concrete).
(3) Deterioration prediction technologies
The most important step in an asset management system
is the prediction of road facility deterioration. The precision
of deterioration predictions has a direct influence on the
selection of the repair period and construction method and
governs the results of the LCC calculation. As a result,
repair/reconstruction plans may vary.
There are probably two approaches to developing a dete-
rioration prediction model (Fig. 4): one based on facility
inspection data and the other based on the deterioration of
the constituent materials of the facility. From a different
perspective, there are a macroscopic deterioration prediction
model that deals with the deterioration of numerous facilities
and an individual prediction model that deals with deteriora-
tion of facilities in a specified environment or of individual
facilities. And there are approaches that treat the prediction
Streak camera
Fig. 3. Corrosion of Main Girders of Bridge.
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100 State after repair
Soundness after repair
Soundness
Present soundness
Present state
Service limit
0 Years
tr
T described above. Considering that Japan will eventually
t r : remaining service life without repairs
Legend e : increase in service life after repairs
T : standard service life of the bridge (life span)
Fig. 4. Conceptual Drawing of a Deterioration Prediction
Model.
model itself either deterministically or probabilistically. At
any rate, to develop these deterioration prediction models,
facility inspection data or other data that represent its degree
of deterioration are needed, and the quantity or reliability of
the data determines the accuracy of the deterioration predic-
tion model.
(4) LCC estimation technologies
The LCC is estimated by calculating the repair costs and
other internal costs and external costs such as the cost of
traffic congestion etc. during repair work that are incurred to
maintain the degree of soundness of the road facility needed
to provide services at the level the facility requires
throughout its life cycle. This is done by calculating LCC for
some repair scenarios, selecting the scenario that produces
the smallest LCC, and preparing a repair plan based on that
scenario. Sensitivity analysis of the repair scenarios is
performed. Therefore, to assure the suitability of the sensi-
tivity analysis, information about the costs, effectiveness,
sustainability etc. of the repair work methods used by the
above deterioration prediction model and the repair scenario
and the estimate of the external costs of traffic congestion
etc. must both be precise enough for use in the sensitivity
Research Trends and Accomplishments
analysis. Another important factor is the suitability of the
Standard deterioration public discount rate that is used to convert the various costs
curve
generated in the future to present values.
5. Future Developments and Challenges
The concepts, structure, and various required technolo-
e gies etc. of the road facility asset management system are
enter a period of widespread deterioration of road facilities,
work has begun on the development of the technologies
discussed in Chapter 4 above that will be needed to construct
the asset management system before this period arrives.
It is important to construct this system by balancing
progress in the design of the overall system with the devel-
opment of the constituent technologies. To develop some of
the constituent technologies of the system, a massive expen-
diture of time and money will be necessary to obtain facility
deterioration data, and the precision of the overall system
will be improved by gradually accumulating usable data.
Therefore, as the system's precision rises, the scope of its
uses will also expand. For example, its applicability will
expand from a large group of facilities to facilities within a
certain environment, then to individual facilities, and the
repair scenario setting will expand from rough setting to
more detailed setting.
On the other hand, practical road management will be
transformed by the introduction of the system as explained
in (1) of Chapter 3. Examples of this include more objective
and quantitative facility inspections and soundness assess-
ments, and the introduction of facility deterioration predic-
tions and LCC based upon these predictions. It will probably
be necessary in the future to study organizational reform to
conform with such changes in road management. It will also
be important to train and deploy personnel involved in road
management and for these personnel to study asset manage-
ment.
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