Highway Data Quality Report Card (HDQ_RC): A Conceptual Framework of Pavement Management Data

Today, state highway agencies (SHA) invest a large amount of money in collecting, storing and managing various types of data ranging from roadway inventory to pavement condition data during the life cycle of highway projects. Despite this huge investment, the use of data in satisfying users' need to extract information and knowledge and support decisions has become questionable. This paper presents a conceptual highway data quality report card (HDQ_RC) that can indicate the level of data quality by identifying decision makers' requirements through the application of a quality function deployment (QFD). The report card utilizes 10 data quality dimensions identified from review of literature and interviews with department of transportation (DOT) managers to analyze the data needs of pavement management decision makers' at a project level. A multi-attribute approach is utilized to analyze the level of data quality with respect to active utilization. The output of this paper may be used as a tool to evaluate the status of various highway project data by linking decision makers' requirements with data quality dimensions. This type of report card also will help justify the return on investment on the continuous and growing data collection efforts.