Assessment of Al-Amarah street within the Al-kut city using pavement condition index (PCI) and GIS technique

The capabilities of geographical system and their spatial analysis is considered the most appropriate tools to enhance pavement management operations, with features such as graphical display of pavement condition. In Iraq, most of transportation agencies do not have a tool that is used as a database for road deteriorations, so there is a need for road surveying and storing the collected information in GIS to know the condition of every road with details. Furthermore, these data can be used for maintenance process and estimation of prior cost. This research has been carried out to estimate of flexible pavement condition through visual surveys using the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) method; so it can provide an easy way to calculate the PCI based on GIS data with Micro PAVER software 5.2. Al-Amarah Street, which is internal road in Al-Kut city in the eastern part of Iraq, is used as a case study. The average pavement condition index of the selected case study is found to be “64” using Micro PAVER 5.2 software which mean “Fair” pavement condition. Arc Map 9.3 has been applied in this study to make an integrated maintenance system for each road in the region demonstrating the annual road deteriorations and the resulting change in the PCI values which occurs every year. The study provides an easy and simplified way of presentation the details of deteriorations on the satellite or the geographical map of the road in which each type of distress has been symbolized with specific sign and each PCI value has been represented with specific color.