1  INTRODUCTION

"Pavement management" refers to a systematic process of maintaining, upgrading and operating a network of pavements.  Pavement management involves the following three major components:

• Pavement life-cycles.  This includes how pavements are built, how their condition changes over time, and how this process can be affected by different forms of maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
• Costs associated with the pavement life-cycle.  This includes the costs of initial construction, maintenance and rehabilitation, assessing end-of-life pavement salvage value, and determining user costs incurred throughout the life-cycle.
• Pavement management systems.  This includes all the different systems used to determine the most appropriate time to rehabilitate pavement, what the most cost-effective method is, and how many dollars it will take to maintain a roadway system at a desirable condition level (WSDOT, 1994).