IT in Road Construction: Recommendations for the Development of Production, Transport and Paving Data Storage in the Flemish Region

Nowadays, several commercial IT applications for asphalt road construction are available which relate to various sub- processes of production, transport and paving activities. A state-of-the-art of the main applications is given in this paper. In order to investigate the scale of use of such systems in the Flemish road construction sector, a survey was carried out at several Flemish contractors. From this, it was concluded that the use is quite limited, in contrast to its availability. Furthermore, other parties' views on this matter were also examined, including road authorities, certification bodies and research institutions. It was found that the lack of registration and archiving of parameters, that influence the pavement process and quality, complicate pro- found subsequently follow-up of the construction activities. The surveys show the need for an independently managed data storage system for the complete production of a road construction. An IT architecture is developed in order to provide an answer to this need. The developed system is objectified through four use cases, which are demonstrated in several demo tracks.