Evaluation of descriptive roadway inventory data collection methods: A test protocol

The main objectives of this research were to investigate the accuracy of descriptive roadway inventory data collected by different methods and to develop a test protocol for the evaluation of roadway inventory data collection methods. Other objectives included reporting time and cost involved in data collection by different collection methods.; Based on a methodology involving four experiments, the research showed that the accuracy of descriptive inventory data varied with the data collection method, the roadway environment, and the type of inventory element collected. Specifically, the use of the manual method for descriptive inventory data collection on urban roadways resulted in more accurate data compared to data collected by methods employing van systems. The accuracy of the manual method tended to decrease on two-lane rural and rural interstate highways relative to collection methods employing van systems. Overall, the manual method produced descriptive inventory data that were sufficiently accurate for most roadway agencies.; The author developed a step-wise, activity-based test protocol that evaluators can use to judge different data collection methods in terms of descriptive data accuracy. The test protocol involves the use of factors that the author found to affect descriptive inventory data accuracy in the four experiments. The author provides support information on the different steps involved in the test protocol.