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Analytical Tools for Asset Management (2005)

Chapter: Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools

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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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Suggested Citation:"Section 3 - Review of Existing Tools." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Analytical Tools for Asset Management. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13851.
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23 SECTION 3 REVIEW OF EXISTING TOOLS 3.1 OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE Tools existing as of August 2002 were reviewed to ensure that: • New tools can complement and build upon the existing base of experience and resources; and • Tools developed as part of this effort can be designed to integrate effectively with other available tools. The selection of tools for the review is not intended to be exhaustive; the goal was to identify the kinds of capabilities that are generally available to support asset management. Tools that have been developed by FHWA and NCHRP, which currently are available to states at low or no cost, were emphasized. However, the review also covers general classes of tools that individual agencies have developed in-house or that are available from private vendors. The choice of tools for inclusion in this review is consistent with the stated pri- mary focus for this project on the highway mode and, secon- darily, on multimodal tradeoffs. This section presents a summary of the tool review; it is organized according to the analysis categories used in the state needs survey to facilitate a comparison of needs with available tools. Appendix B provides detailed summaries of the capabilities of and methodologies used in the PIARC HDM-4 model and the following tools developed through previous FHWA or NCHRP projects. • NCHRP Project 12-43 Bridge Life-Cycle Cost Analy- sis Tool; • EAROMAR Pavement Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Tool; • FHWA Project 115 Pavement Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Software Tool; • HDM-4 Roadway Investment Analysis Tool; • Highway Economic Requirements System for State Use; • IDAS ITS Deployment Analysis System; • MicroBENCOST; • National Bridge Investment Analysis System; • Surface Transportation Efficiency Analysis Model; • StratBENCOST; and • TransDec. 3.2 REVIEW OF CURRENT ANALYTICAL TOOLS Pavement, bridge, maintenance, safety, congestion, and other management systems are common in most DOTs; many of these systems have analytical capabilities spanning the full range of activities in the asset management process. The fol- lowing subsection briefly describes these management sys- tems. Subsequent subsections cover more specialized tools and are organized by the categories established in Figure 2. Management Systems Pavement Management Systems (PMSs) PMSs are well established in state as well as regional and local transportation agencies. Many commercial and custom- developed PMSs are in place and provide capabilities for • Maintaining inventory information on the road network, in some instances linked to GIS maps; • Storing condition information (e.g., roughness, rutting, distress) and calculating summary statistics for different portions of the network; • Projecting future changes in condition for different indicators as a function of pavement type, level of use (e.g., functional class, average daily traffic, or equiva- lent single-axle loads), and other characteristics; • Applying decision rules (often implemented as condition- based triggers) for when particular treatments should be performed; • Simulating the deterioration and application of dif- ferent treatments over time (with and without budget constraints), which provides the basis for needs estima- tion and analysis of investment levels versus projected performance; • Generating candidate projects and, in some cases, gener- ating and evaluating alternatives and selecting the most cost-effective ones within the simulation framework; and • Ranking candidate projects based on condition, benefit/ cost, or other user-defined measures.

Bridge Management Systems (BMSs) Nearly all states operate a BMS that assists with identifica- tion and evaluation of bridge preservation and improvement strategies. Several states have developed in-house systems. AASHTO licenses the Pontis® BMS to more than 45 states and other agencies. AASHTO released Pontis version 4.1 in 2002. Pontis provides the capabilities to relate performance to investment levels and to develop an optimal long-term bridge investment strategy. The system is in use in more than 30 states, although many agencies are not yet making full use of the system’s modeling and optimization features. Version 4.1 of the system provides considerable new flexibility in the modeling and simulation process for users to incorporate agency-specific work packaging and selection practices. Congestion, Safety, Public Transit, and Intermodal Management Systems Congestion, safety, public transit, and intermodal man- agement systems were developed by a number of states in response to the original ISTEA legislation management sys- tem requirements. These systems provide useful capabilities for identifying transportation needs, analyzing investment options, and assessing performance. Maintenance Management Systems (MMSs) Many states have an MMS in place primarily to plan, schedule, and track maintenance activities. Several DOTs have developed or are pursuing development of analytic capabilities within their MMSs to relate budget levels to level of service (LOS) or performance targets. California is in the process of implementing a new integrated maintenance man- agement system (IMMS) for planning, budgeting, and sched- uling of maintenance work. Tools That Evaluate Investment Levels and Tradeoffs Performance Tradeoffs Within Investment Categories The FHWA sponsored the development of and continuing enhancements to the National Bridge Investment Analysis System (NBIAS), an analysis tool for predicting nationwide bridge maintenance, improvement, and rehabilitation needs and measures of effectiveness over a multiyear period for a range of budget levels. A graphically based system for con- ducting “what-if” analyses, NBIAS enables a user to experi- ment with different budget assumptions to see how the con- dition of the national bridge network will vary in the future based on the annual level of investment. NBIAS works with 24 the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) data set and uses the modeling approach that is in the Pontis BMS. A series of enhancements to NBIAS is ongoing to provide improved capabilities to work with specific bridges (as opposed to aggre- gate populations of bridge elements simulated from NBI data). These enhancements will make feasible the use of NBIAS capabilities in conjunction with Pontis datasets from indi- vidual states. PlanOpt, a tool with similar capabilities to NBIAS, is in use at the Swedish National Road Administration. PlanOpt was designed to work with the existing SAFEBRO bridge inventory system and uses a modeling and performance approach based on the lack of capital value (LCV) concept. LCV is a measure of overall bridge health (calculated based on the ratio of bridge restoration cost to replacement cost) and consists of bearing capacity and durability components. PlanOpt uses (1) deterioration curves to model changes in LCV over time and (2) models to estimate agency and user costs as functions of LCV. The previously discussed management systems are most frequently used to analyze the relationship between perfor- mance and investment levels within particular program cate- gories. However, some agencies have developed specialized tools external to their management systems. The Michigan DOT’s Road Quality Forecasting System (RQFS) and com- ponents of Wisconsin’s meta-manager are examples. Performance Tradeoffs Across Investment Categories The Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS) was originally designed in the late 1980s for use in FHWA’s biennial reports on the condition and performance of the nation’s transportation system. For this purpose, HERS applies a combination of economic and highway-engineering analy- sis to sample-section data in FHWA’s Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS), a database that contains detailed information for a sample of approximately 100,000 sections of highways. A version of HERS for state use (HERS/ST) has been eval- uated by 17 states, and work on an enhanced version is under way. HERS/ST is a tool for analyzing the relationship between highway investment levels and performance. HERS/ST applies engineering standards and benefit/cost analysis to identify project alternatives to correct deficiencies, but also can accept overrides to its selections to reflect actual planned or pro- grammed projects. Given either a budget constraint or a set of performance objectives, the system selects the most eco- nomically attractive project options and produces reports on the resulting network performance. HERS/ST provides users with information about individual sections of highway (which is not provided by the national HERS) and the ability to use state-specific values for the cost of highway improvements and for other parameters.

Because HERS/ST can analyze a range of investments, including system expansion and improvement as well as sys- tem preservation, it is ideally suited to analyzing tradeoffs between preservation and mobility programs for a state DOT. The World Bank and the World Road Association (PIARC) have released an updated version of the Highway Develop- ment Model (HDM), which has been widely used throughout the world (primarily in developing countries) to analyze road- way management and investment alternatives. Prior versions of HDM emphasized project-level analysis; HDM-4 offers program and strategy analysis capabilities. HDM-4 includes a simulation capability featuring pavement deterioration mod- els; application of user-defined standards and criteria for when different project candidates are considered; and calculation of life-cycle agency costs, road user costs, and social and envi- ronmental impacts. Washington State DOT has sponsored the development of a prototype multimodal investment choice analysis tool (MICA) intended to assist in making budgetary tradeoffs across programs. MICA includes a set of worksheets for benefit/cost analysis for different project types. Impacts on qualitative criteria also are entered for each project. The tool selects groups of projects that fit within a specified set of bud- get constraints (lump sum, regional, or modal) and provide the best value according to a selected criterion or multiple criteria. NCHRP Project 8-36(7) developed a generalized frame- work for multimodal tradeoff analysis, including a set of tem- plates for • Establishing a structure of goals, objectives, performance measures, and targets for interprogram analysis (along with identifying assessment data and procedures); • Establishing a similar structure for intraprogram analysis; • Identifying key programs of interest that should be ana- lyzed in the tradeoff process; • Applying analysis procedures to calculate performance measures for the current situation and for a set of alter- native scenarios of future funding allocation; and • Presenting tradeoff analysis information in a manner that highlights differences across alternatives. NCHRP Project 8-36(7) provided a set of sample tem- plates for hypothetical tradeoff analyses. See Table 6 for an example. Predicted Performance Impacts for a Set of Projects Some PMSs and BMSs provide network-wide performance results associated with the implementation of a set of specific projects. This capability has been built into the integrated 25 asset management and/or work program management sys- tems of some states (e.g., New York, Wisconsin). Tools That Identify Needs and Solutions Needs identification is a core function of pavement, bridge, safety, and congestion management systems, as described pre- viously. Several states have implemented integrated approaches to needs and solution identification using the outputs of man- agement systems together with GIS and query tools: • Wisconsin’s “meta-manager” is built around a SAS data- set that combines information on highway inventory characteristics, pavement and bridge conditions, crash data, traffic data, geometric deficiencies, and actual proj- ects in the program. All of these data can be viewed in GIS displays. • Montana has implemented a performance program- ming process that places information from the pave- ment, bridge, congestion, and safety management sys- tems into an ArcView-based system performance query tool. Districts use this tool to select projects to nominate for programming that are consistent with the project mix in the funding plan. • Michigan DOT has built an integrated transportation management system that supports integrated views of pavement, bridge, congestion, and safety information. • Florida DOT has a GIS-based decision support system (DSS) that supports needs analysis for the intrastate high- way system. DSS generates a need category or grade for segments or user-defined corridors based on five vari- ables: pavement condition, congestion, safety, intermodal connectivity, and economic development. The system also shows projects in the current work program. • California’s new IMMS includes the core asset inven- tory and is intended to be used in conjunction with pave- ment, bridge, and highway LOS management systems to identify needs. Impacts of Alternative Policies for Project Scope, Timing, and Design FHWA’s Strategic Work Zones Analysis Tools (SWAT) program has produced a spreadsheet analysis tool called QuickZone for analyzing the impacts of work zones and associated mitigation strategies. Additional tools providing a richer set of capabilities are under development. QUEWZ-98 (13) is another tool available for analyzing traffic impacts, emissions, and road user costs associated with lane closures. Other systems, such as EAROMAR and life-cycle cost analysis tools, also have capabilities to analyze alternative project scopes and timing.

Examples Agencywide Goal Agency Performance Measures Long-Term Target Current Condition Baseline Scenario Passenger Scenario Freight Scenario • Percentage of roadway lane-miles in good or excellent condition. Principal arterials: >95% Other state roads: >80% 93% 81% 96% 80% 96% 80% 96% 79% • Percentage of bridges that are structurally sound. Principal arterials: >98% Other state roads: >95% 98% 93% 95% 90% 94% 90% 94% 90% • Percentage of transit vehicles within design life-span. >95% >92% >92% >96% >91% • Deferred maintenance expense (cost to “fix” everything in year 10). N/A N/A $9 B $10 B $10 B System Preservation and Maintenance • Percentage of bridges on arterials without weight restrictions. >95% 90% 90% 89% 88% Safety • Crash exposure across all modes (number of persons in crashes per number of person-trips) (crashes per million person-trips). Reduce by 10% 1.0 0.84 0.82 0.82 • Extent to which citizen’s “key factors” are addressed. N/A Fair Fair Fair-poor Fair-good Support Economic Development • In-state jobs supported through transportation expenditures. N/A 10,000 11,500 11,600 11,400 Statewide Mobility and Equity • Sum of public sector expenditures and user costs (vehicle ownership, travel time, fees, fares, etc.). N/A $28 B $36.5 B $36 B $34 B • Percentage of bridges on arterials without weight restrictions. >95% 90% 90% 89% 88% • Ratio of peak to off-peak travel conditions. <1.25 1.30 1.39 1.36 1.35 TABLE 6 Multimodal tradeoff analysis example (assessment of inter-program effects)

Examples Agencywide Goal Agency Performance Measures Long-Term Target Current Condition Baseline Scenario Passenger Scenario Freight Scenario Commute: >50% 40% 38% 39% 38% Statewide Mobility and Equity (continued) • Percentage of trips that can be made by non-automotive modes. Local non-commute: >75% 65% 60% 63% 60% • Percentage of population with access to demand-responsive transit or paratransit. Intercity: >50% 100% 45% 80% 40% 72% 40% 75% 40% 72% • Extent to which “Smart Growth” principles are supported. N/A Fair support Fair support Fair support Fair support • Extent to which local planning and development decisions are supported. N/A Fair-good support Fair-good support Fair-good support Fair support • Consistency with State Implementation Plan (SIP). Meet all SIP budgets and deadlines Met Met Met Met State’s General Public Policies • Extent to which environmental resources are protected. N/A Fair-Good Fair Fair Fair Source: (9). TABLE 6 (Continued)

Tools That Evaluate and Compare Options Project/Strategy Evaluation Most of the extensive array of project- and strategy-level analysis tools include benefit/cost analysis capabilities. These tools can be used to assess the merits of an individual project or strategy and can be applied sequentially to different options to compare the relative merits of different approaches for a specific facility and, in some cases, for a corridor or subarea/ subnetwork. The tools vary with respect to the types of proj- ects analyzed, the types of benefits and costs considered, and the level of detail for the analysis. MicroBENCOST evaluates the benefits and costs of high- way projects (added capacity, new location or bypass, reha- bilitation, pavement improvement or overlay, bridge improve- ment, safety improvement, railroad crossing, high-occupancy vehicle [HOV], and combination projects). The benefits account for changes in vehicle operating costs, accident costs, travel time, fuel consumption, and vehicular emissions. This software is a DOS product, although an upgrade to Windows has been proposed. StratBENCOST also provides benefit/cost analysis for highway improvements, but it is designed to assist in compar- ing large numbers of projects in the concept stage. Highway facility upgrades are defined based on the transition of a facil- ity from 1 (of 12) facility type to another. Vehicle operating cost and emissions estimates are based on MicroBENCOST lookup tables. Accident reductions are based on the original HERS accident rates (which have been updated). One of StratBENCOST’s innovations is the incorporation of risk analysis using a built-in Monte Carlo simulation to allow users to understand levels of uncertainty associated with the results. Some states, including California and Washington, have developed their own benefit/cost analysis systems. Califor- nia’s system can analyze both highway and transit projects; Washington’s system handles highway projects, including HOV lanes, park-and-ride lots, and safety projects. STEAM analyzes the benefits, costs, and impacts of multi- modal investments. It incorporates economic analysis to develop monetized impact estimates and provides separate estimates of energy and environmental impacts. STEAM works with input from traditional four-step transportation models. It post-processes traffic assignments to obtain more accurate highway speeds, particularly under congested con- ditions. STEAM incorporates risk analysis to describe the level of uncertainty in analysis results. FHWA also has developed a simpler spreadsheet model called SPASM for multimodal corridor analysis on the sketch-planning level, which can be used where travel demand model outputs are not available. NET_BC (developed by Bernardin Lochmueller & Asso- ciates) is another example of a travel model post-processing tool that performs benefit/cost analysis. This tool was applied to analyze major corridor investment in Indiana. 28 IDAS is a sketch-planning tool that analyzes benefits and costs for ITS investments, such as traffic management sys- tems, emergency management services, electronic payment systems, and incident management systems. Like STEAM, it acts as a post-processor of travel demand model data. IDAS also includes a Monte Carlo simulation capability for risk analysis. The new 2002 AASHTO Roadside Design Guide includes an updated algorithm (and companion software, Roadway Safety Analysis Program [RSAP]) for comparing the cost- effectiveness of alternative safety improvement designs. TransDec is a tool that provides a generic multicriteria evaluation of multimodal investment strategies. Users spec- ify a hierarchy of goals, objectives, measures, and rating scales and provide specific performance measures for a set of alternatives. The tool calculates scores for each alternative. Project Prioritization Many of the previously described tools that can be used to evaluate options also can be used to rank or prioritize a set of candidate projects within a particular program category or across program categories. Projects are most commonly pri- oritized within pavement, bridge, and congestion and safety management systems; through previously described integrated management systems; or by simple scoring methods tailored to the needs and data available in specific agencies. Washington State DOT has developed TOPSIS, a program that uses a benefit/cost ratio (from the in-house B/C analysis tool) together with project impacts on a set of non-quantitative evaluation criteria (e.g., community support, modal integra- tion) to rank projects based on their distance from a theoret- ical ideal solution. Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) Life-cycle costs are typically analyzed as part of a detailed, project-level analysis of alternative design choices for major pavement or bridge projects. However, planning-level tools are also available that calculate life-cycle costs for different maintenance strategies, both for individual facilities and net- works of facilities. In addition to EAROMAR, other pave- ment and bridge management systems as well as HDM-4 provide capabilities for analyzing life-cycle costs of differ- ent maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. NCHRP Project 12-43 developed a methodology and asso- ciated Visual Basic software tool (BLCCA, completed in 2002) to analyze bridge life-cycle costs. Released in 1999 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Bridge LCC 1.0 is a tool that analyzes life- cycle costs to assess the cost-effectiveness of alternative bridge construction materials. This tool is intended for use at the preliminary design phase of bridge project development.

NCHRP Project 1-33 developed a methodology to improve pavement investment decisions. This life-cycle cost method- ology and companion software tools incorporate user costs, based on new research on the relationship between pavement roughness and vehicle operating costs. FHWA Demonstration Project 115 produced the compre- hensive Technical Bulletin, Life-Cycle Cost Analysis in Pavement Design. This bulletin, published in September 1998, provides detailed procedures for conducting pavement LCCA. The FHWA sponsored development of a software package to automate application of these procedures. Developed for FHWA, EAROMAR is a tool for analyz- ing pavement life-cycle costs on high-standard roads. This tool is older (DOS-vintage) but provides significant flexi- bility to analyze different types of pavement maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction options and their impacts on both agency costs and user costs. It has the capability to assess capital/maintenance tradeoffs and the comparison of preventive versus deferred maintenance. Because EAROMAR employs a detailed analysis of work zones and their effects 29 on traffic flow and congestion, it also can be used to investi- gate (1) the staging of projects, (2) the effects of construction or maintenance contract packaging, and (3) options to limit road occupancy to particular hours of the day or to particular months or seasons of the year. Tools That Monitor Results Performance and Cost Monitoring and Feedback Construction management/estimation systems such as the BAMS/DSS and Estimator products in the AASHTO Trns•port suite have the potential to be used for cost track- ing; however, careful planning is required to ensure that mean- ingful results can be derived from these systems, and a trans- lation process is required to develop unit costs that are usable by most management systems. Some PMSs and BMSs allow cost assumptions to be updated based on recorded costs of actions taken.

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 545: Analytical Tools for Asset Management examines two tools developed to support tradeoff analysis for transportation asset management. The software tools and the accompanying documentation are designed to help state departments of transportation and other transportation agencies identify, evaluate, and recommend investment decisions for managing the agency’s infrastructure assets.

The software tools associated with NCHRP Report 545 are available in an ISO format. Links to instructions on buring an .ISO CD-ROM and the download site for the .ISO CD-ROM are below.

Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image

Download the NCHRP CRP-CD-57.ISO CD-ROM Image

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