ABSTRACT

Correct planning of road maintenance should require intervention before road reliability conditions become unsustainable. To this aim, it is necessary to evaluate the rate of road degradation, which is strictly linked to road roughness, using high performance instruments like the laser profilometer. The International Roughness Index, obtained from profilometric survey, provides basic information regarding the general state of a road pavement, but does not take into account the characteristics of distresses. In this context, the University of Perugia (on behalf of the Province of Perugia) developed a new prototype of laser profilometer and an innovative post-processing software. This equipment enables global and local analysis. The global analysis provides the intervention priorities of a whole road infrastructure, while, with local analysis, the single distresses and the cross slopes of a limited road portion can be evaluated. Information about the type of distress are very useful in order to plan maintenance work.