ABSTRACT
Since 2011 a part of the BAB A5 motorway, running through the federal state of Hesse, is dedicated as long-term observation section. It is used for quality assurance of the routine pavement condition surveys as well as to acquire data for research purposes. Those data might be used both for the development of standards of pavement condition survey as well as for the objectives related to maintenance and use of road networks.
The data collection has been conducted as a part of routine pavement condition survey. In particular: longitudinal and transversal evenness, skid resistant and surface distresses. The spatial resolution of collected elementary data is one meter. But accuracy of the GPS signals and differences between measuring systems have often big impact on localization of the elementary data. Hence a dedicated, semi-automatic algorithm for the data synchronisation between measurements has been developed. It allows to achieve data comparability at the level of a single meter. This effort was necessary to provide a well-synchronized data in best quality as an input for further research projects. Data analysis revealed that detailed researches dedicated to life-cycle analyses on object level are possible only with high quality data measured in relatively short cycles.
The paper introduces the long-term observation section functionality and discusses data acquisition, especially emphasizing data quality assurance and synchronization processes. Furthermore, the first object-based results and data analysis are discussed and areas for further possibilities and researches are proposed.
