TOWARDS THE OPTIMISATION OF AIRPORT PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: A UAV APPROACH

Abstract: All licensed and certified airports are required by law to properly maintain their pavement infrastructure as to ensure maintainability, reliability and operational safety in order to continue business and services at all times. Runways are critical airport facilities and require regular maintenance. In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology as a project lifecycle tool has been recognized by the domestic and international engineering industry as a potential technology that the airport industry can use to assist with pavement infrastructure maintenance.

As airport authorities are encouraged to develop and implement an Airport Pavement Management System (APMS) and continuous reporting procedure, which not only evaluates the current condition of the airport pavements, but also predicts its future condition by using historic data. The recent digital revolution and introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles opened the doors for more efficient operational tool that can be used to determine the Pavement Condition Indicators (PCI) on the runway, an indicator often used to evaluate pavement structures.

The potential introduction of unmanned aerial vehicle to the airport environment and its effects were investigated in this research study. This was done through a comparative study. The strategy used was to collect data by conducting a series of on-site experiments using an unmanned aerial vehicle at a particular Airport. Conventional runway pavement inspections were simultaneously conducted using the visual inspection method. This was done as part of a quantitative research method. The results of the two methodology were evaluated and the findings showed that the integration of unmanned aerial vehicle for conducting runway pavement inspections is a viable solution for the airport environment as it offers real time reporting and is accurate like the visual inspection from the conventional runway pavement inspection method. The findings of this research study could benefit the airport environment when embarking on pavement maintenance intervention on the runway and further optimise the entire airport pavement management system.