Largo, FL – In many climates, autumn brings with it a familiar sight: leaves on the road. But how do leaves affect road condition data collection? We ran a test to demonstrate!
Our field crew collected a specific street three times, first with no leaves, and two times after leaves had been thrown onto a portion of the road. The section of road was divided like this:
A) 0-77 ft – No leaves
B) 77-110 ft – Few leaves
C) 110-200 ft – Many leaves
D) 200-250ft – Few leaves
We compared the measurements of IRI, rutting, texture, raveling, and cracking between the runs. The following graphs show the effect of leaves on various deliverables. For example, with leaves, erroneous rut depths of over 3 cm (1.2 in) are detected! Lanes are also not detected correctly as can be seen in the images above. Note that since the reporting interval is very short (5 ft), repeatability for the areas without leaves is as expected.
Data collection operators must have a way of detecting these situation and excluding invalid data from reports.
Question: How do you, or how does your data collection provider, filter out invalid data from the results before importing the data into your PMS?
With ICC, you can measure with confidence and monitor with ease.