Background

Research conducted by NCHRP on transportation asset management has provided both FHWA and AASHTO’s Subcommittee on Asset Management with valuable information for advancing the state of the practice and supporting implementation of asset management provisions now required under MAP-21.  For example, the AASHTO Transportation Asset Management Guide: A Focus on Implementation (developed under NCHRP) is designed to encourage transportation agencies to address strategic questions as they confront the task of managing the surface transportation system. Drawn from both national and international knowledge and experience, it provides guidance to state DOT decision makers, as well as county and municipal transportation agencies, to assist them in realizing the most from financial resources now and in the future, preserving highway assets, and providing the service expected by customers. State DOTs have used the Implementation Guide to help them meet the asset management requirements of MAP-21.

MAP-21’s asset management requirements will be a primary concern in state DOTs for the next two to three years. While the Implementation Guide is tremendous resource for state DOTs and covers the breadth of the aspects of implementation, there are additional areas where further research and development are needed to provide the tools and techniques that will be needed by practitioners as their proficiency with asset management matures.  Identifying and prioritizing those areas will provide the transportation asset management community with a systematic and efficient approach to selecting and recommending additional research, capacity building, and other types of activities needed.

Project Objective(s)

The objective of this research was to develop a long-term research strategy – a “Transportation Asset Management Research Roadmap” (Roadmap) – to guide future research and development activities for advancing the state of practice in transportation asset management in state DOTS.  The Roadmap should be drawn largely but not necessarily exclusively from the strategic plan developed by FHWA’s Transportation Asset Management Expert Task Group (TAM ETG) that outlines important capabilities that are needed to achieve the ETG’s vision (information on the ETG is available at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/asset/etg/index.cfm ).  Although an overview of existing guidance and other tools was included to provide context for a forward-looking research strategy, this research was fundamentally not a synthesis of existing research and tools. 

The report is now complete and has been released as an AASHTO Report: NCHRP 08-36: Task 134.