Austroads, the peak organisation of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies, has commenced an ambitious new project to establish a harmonised road asset data standard for use across Australia and New Zealand.

Opus International Consultants and GISSA have been appointed to deliver the project, including the extensive research into existing data requirements and current practice. The project will be developed in close consultation with local governments and road agencies in Australia and New Zealand and is expected to take approximately 12 months to complete and the first stage involves gathering and reviewing information.

“The project has been initiated in response to requests from stakeholders who increasingly need to share data with other road management agencies but are frustrated by the lack of common data standards,” said Project Manager Angus Draheim. “The project will deliver a recommended harmonised road data standard for core road asset management activities and a business case demonstrating the value of adopting the new standard. Austroads anticipates that once a model standard is provided road management agencies and councils will see the benefit and steadily work towards aligning their systems with it.”

“A business case developed by Austroads in 2014 shows significant benefits and cost savings can be obtained by road management and governance agencies being able to readily share common data between each other. Benefits could include improved understanding of road assets, direct savings to agencies for data management and reporting, consistent and comparable data to support better government decision making and supporting new technology and transport innovation.”

Road managers include all levels of government agencies that collect road-related information to inform asset management strategies and determine expenditure priorities. Without ‘harmonisation’ of this data, each road manager collects similar, yet slightly different, information, resulting in minor but consequential differences in road asset data limits. This incompatibility of asset information between road networks increases the costs of working across different road networks.

The types of data to be considered in the project include:

• descriptions and locations of assets
• maintenance activities and cost metrics
• asset condition and performance
• road classification

For further information or to register an interest in this project please visit https://apps.opus.co.nz/austroads/