A Spatial-statistical model to analyse historical rutting data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Bayesian spatial-statistical model to analyze and predict pavement rutting, identifying high-risk areas and key influencing factors to improve maintenance planning and extend pavement lifespan.

Contribution

It develops an advanced Bayesian hierarchical model incorporating spatial and explanatory variables, providing detailed diagnostics and risk maps for pavement rutting analysis.

Findings

Spatial components explain significant rutting variability.

Traffic intensity and asphalt type are primary rutting drivers.

High-risk areas can reduce pavement life by over 10 years.

Abstract

Pavement rutting poses a significant challenge in flexible pavements, necessitating costly asphalt resurfacing. To address this issue comprehensively, we propose an advanced Bayesian hierarchical framework of latent Gaussian models with spatial components. Our model provides a thorough diagnostic analysis, pinpointing areas exhibiting unexpectedly high rutting rates. Incorporating spatial and random components, and important explanatory variables like annual average daily traffic (traffic intensity), asphalt type, rut depth and lane width, our proposed models account for and estimate the influence of these variables on rutting. This approach not only quantifies uncertainties and discerns locations at the highest risk of requiring maintenance, but also uncover spatial dependencies in rutting (millimetre/year). We apply our models to a data set spanning eleven years (2010-2020). Our findings emphasise the systematic unexplained spatial rutting effect, where some of the rutting variability is accounted for by spatial components, asphalt type, in conjunction with traffic intensity, is also found to be the primary driver of rutting. Furthermore, the spatial dependencies uncovered reveal road sections experiencing more than 1 millimeter of rutting beyond annual expectations. This leads to a halving of the expected pavement lifespan in these areas. Our study offers valuable insights, presenting maps indicating expected rutting, and identifying locations with accelerated rutting rates, resulting in a reduction in pavement life expectancy of at least 10 years.