Australian data collection practices

An international claim that "the collection of pavement surface condition data remains at an unacceptable level similar to what it was a decade ago" does not ring true in Australia. Examples where the level of the "best practice" bar has been raised by Australian and New Zealand innovation include: performance specified maintenance contracting; ensuring consistency between different laser profilers by Transit New Zealand; development and use of sophisticated video monitoring equipment, and development and use of "RoadCrack" by the Roads and Traffic Authority NSW and CSIRO. This paper provides an overview and context of the last 30 years of manual and automated pavement data collection in New South Wales. It presents the current approaches to data collection by each of the Australian and New Zealand road agencies. Today, these approaches are mainly driven by the business needs of the road agency and not just the technical systems that support the business. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E212095.