AASHTO Transportation Asset Management Guide—Executive Summary
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Asset Planning and Improvement Strategies
With an understanding of growth and future demand trends, and the impacts on levels of service, an agency can
make more informed decisions on how to address future deciencies or shortfalls in service. This may require cap-
ital investment in new works involving newly created or expanded assets, or consideration of a range of “non-asset
solutions” (demand management). [Section 5.3.3]
Often, the level of service and performance requirements of a transportation system can be met by solutions other
than new construction. In situations where management and operational activities or treatments are legitimate alter-
natives to new construction, it is desirable to include these actions in an agency’s broad “toolbox” of asset manage-
ment solutions. [Section 5.3.4]
For example, options for reducing congestion in the central business district of a city might include building new ar-
terials or building a bypass to take through trafc away from the area. But lower-impact solutions are also possible,
such as improving public transit service, imposing parking restrictions, or collecting a toll for access to the area.
The non-asset based solutions provide for the possibility of meeting a level of service demand more cost-effectively
by: improving a competing or complementary facility or mode, reducing demand to a level that can be served by the
existing infrastructure, modifying the level of service to one that can be satised by the existing infrastructure, or a
combination of these. [Section 5.3.4.1]
Risk Assessment and Management
Risk management is a process of identifying sources of risk, evaluating them, and integrating mitigation actions and
strategies into routine business functions of the agency. Risk is associated with uncertainty. Risk management should
be viewed as a core business driver inuencing all activity and not as an isolated, add-on process. Integration of risk
management into asset management is relatively new, and has focused thus far on bridges and tunnels. However,
all types of transportation assets have uncertainty and risk factors associated with them. It must be remembered that
the risks associated with individual assets translate immediately into risks for the agency, and the consequences and
effects of all risk events must therefore be considered at the agency level, too.
In common practice today, risk in asset management is assessed as vulnerability to natural and manmade hazards, as
discussed in Section 5.4.1 of theAASHTO Transportation Asset Management Guide—A Focus on Implementation.
The assessment is typically conducted in three steps:
1. Likelihood of an extreme event, expressed as a probability, or range of probability, of an event such as a
ood, earthquake, asset failure, or other risk driver.
2. Consequences to the asset, a categorization of the damage or loss of function of the asset, conditional on
occurrence of an event.
3. Effect on mission, life, property, and the environment, a categorization of the effect on the agency, the public,
users, and non-users, of the asset damage or loss of function caused by the extreme event. [Section 5.4]
Sources and Types of Risk
There are many potential sources of risk to a transportation agency. These can be grouped into four major areas:
• Natural events and hazards: These include oods, snow storms, extreme wind, wildre, landslide, tsuna-
mi, and earthquake. While probabilities and return periods of these events may be understood, it cannot be
predicted when exactly the next event will occur. These events cannot be controlled, although an agency can
prepare and mitigate against the effects in advance.
• External impacts on the agency: These include the failure of other parties or organizations to provide a ser-
vice or product upon which the transportation agency depends. Examples can include the supply of power for
trafc signals, lighting, or other automated highway controls, or the supply of materials which are decient in
some way.