2008 - Measuring Pavement Conditon in Developing Countries: The World Banks Experience

Presented at the PIARC 6th Symposium on Pavement Surface Characteristics. 

For over 20 years the World Bank has supported clients in developing countries to procure pavement condition monitoring equipment and/or services.  The success of these projects has been mixed. While some countries have successfully institutionalized sustainable data collection, too many have failed either due to the adoption of overly complex equipment or inadequate institutional capacity.

As a result of this, the Bank has put forth a number of key concepts in an endeavour to ensure appropriate and sustainable pavement condition data collection. These include concepts such as the \\\'Information Quality Level\\\', which indicates the appropriate level of data detail given the intended purpose, to developing generic specifications for the procurement of data collection equipment and services.

The paper presents some of the experiences of the Bank in these different projects, highlighting the key lessons learned and how agencies can better ensure sustainable and appropriate data collection.

The presentation which accompanies the paper can be downloaded here.