Managing the rehabilitation of forest roads using historical daily roughness data collected by the Opti-Grade system

Brown, Mark (2002). Managing the rehabilitation of forest roads using historical daily roughness data collected by the Opti-Grade system. Mémoire de maîtrise électronique, Montréal, École de technologie supérieure.

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Résumé

The forest industry represents an important contributor to the Canadian economy, generating $44.2 billion worth of exports per year and providing direct jobs to more than 35000 Canadians. As with most industries in the world that are dealing witb the issue of globalization, the Canadian forest industry faces increased competition for International markets. and this competition generates an ever-increasing need to control costs and spend budgets efficiently to obtain the best-possible results. One important area of operational costs for the forest industry involves forest roads. which represent about 15% of total in-woods operational costs.

The key to controlling road costs lies in obtaining timely information on the roads, and this concept underlies the implementation of any pavement management system. In the case of forest roads, years of evolution witbin the industry bave not been accompanied by efforts to obtain and update information about road conditions and management. When trucks and thus roads were first introduced in the forest industry, they were used solely for short-distance transport. so road networks were small and those in charge of maintenance could easily keep track of the condition and management of their roads. As it became necessary to extend the road networks for longer transportation distances and as road managers took on responsibility for multiple tasks in addition to road management, their personal knowledge of the roads inevitably decreased greatly. Consequently, the maintenance of road networks fell into a patterned approach in which every section of the road received the same maintenance, regardless of that section·s performance. Similarly, road rehabilitation suffers from a less than
optimal approach; with no way to justify the need for a budget to perform road rehabilitation and no way to objectively identify where rehabilitation is required, road rehabilitation is only performed when money is left over in the budget.

To deal with these road maintenance issues, the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) has recently implemented an effective, simple, low-cost system called Opti-Grade. This system consists of a hardware component and a software component. The hardware is installed on a haul vehicle that travels regularly across the road network, and once it bas been installed, it continuously measures road roughness. This data is then transferred daily to the software, which analyzes it based on userdefined criteria to identify wbere grading is required. This focused approach to road maintenance has allowed the eighteen Canadian forestry operations that have
implemented Opti-Grade in 2001 to save between 15 and 35% on their road maintenance costs. However, although Opti-Grade has significantly improved road maintenance, additional efforts must be made to improve forest road rehabilitation management.

The large database of road roughness values being created and stored by Opti-Grade provides a natural basis for a future road rehabilitation management system (RMS). To confrrm the reliability of Opti-Grade's data for use in such an RMS, the repeatability of the Opti-Grade system's measurements was tested and it was confrrmed that the level of repeatability was adequate. Through a literature search, various currently available pavement management systems suitable for rehabilitation management in the forest industry based on Opti-Grade data were identified and evaluated. It was concluded that no existing system was well suited to the needs of the forest industry and the use of Opti-Grade data. Therefore, a RMS was developed that would identify where and when rehabilitation should be performed.

The Opti-Grade data suggest that the roughness of forest roads is very variable over short times and distances and thus, this data is not directly usable for the development of road performance curves. Instead, it was determined that the best method for modeling road performance based on Opti-Grade data would be based on Markov chains. To do this analysis, sections of the road network were divided into families, based on road geometry. This typically gives three or four families per road network. Markov matrices are then developed based on the Opti-Grade data for each segment of road within a family; subsequently, a Markov matrix is devised for each age group within a family of roads. Using these predictive models, the road user and maintenance costs are simulated using Monte Carlo simulations summed to determine the total annual cost for each age group of road. The total 5-year costs of six different scenarios are provided to the manager; the chosen scenarios involved doing no rehabilitation, and performing rehabilitation in years 1 through 5. The road manager can then generate a 5-year road rehabilitation plan in which the location and time of the rehabilitation has been economically optimized.

Titre traduit

Gestion de la réfection des chemins forestiers à l'aide de données historiques quotidiennes sur la rugosité recueillies avec le système OPTI-Grade

Résumé traduit

Pour gérer l'entretien des chemins forestiers, l'Institut canadien de recherches en génie forestier (FERIC) a mis en application Opti-Grade, un système de gestion de nivelage, qui a permis aux entreprises forestières d'économiser entre 15 et 35% de leurs coûts d'entretien des chemins. En plus d'être un outil de gestion de l'entretien journalier, les données d'Opti-Grade peuvent être utilisées pour améliorer la gestion de la réfection des chemins forestiers.

Pour confirmer la fiabilité des données du système Opti-Grade nous avons étudié la répétabilité des mesures obtenues. Divers systèmes de gestion de chaussée disponibles ont été évalués pour être utilisés avec les données du système Opti-Grade afin de gérer la réfection des chemins. Comme aucun système ne convenait parfaitement aux besoins de l'industrie forestière, on a décidé d'élaborer un système de gestion de la réfection des chemins capable d'isoler les tronçons de chemins à réparer et de déterminer la date d'exécution de ces travaux.

Type de document:	Mémoire ou thèse (Mémoire de maîtrise électronique)
Renseignements supplémentaires:	"Mémoire de 21 crédits présenté à l'École de technologie supérieure comme exigence partielle à l'obtention de la maîtrise en génie de la construction." Bibliogr.: p. [89]-92
Mots-clés libres:	Chemin, Donnee, Forestier, Gestion, Historique, Nivelage, Opti-Grade, Quotidien, Refection, Rugosite, Systeme
Directeur de mémoire/thèse:	Directeur de mémoire/thèse Assaf, Gabriel J.
Codirecteur:	Codirecteur Provencher, Yves
Programme:	Maîtrise en ingénierie > Génie de la construction
Date de dépôt:	12 mai 2011 14:18
Dernière modification:	02 déc. 2016 16:45
URI:	https://espace.etsmtl.ca/id/eprint/824

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