Under Section 1106 of the "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act," also commonly referred to as "MAP-21," State agencies are required to "develop a risk-based asset management plan for the National Highway System to improve or preserve the condition of the assets and the performance of the system" [23 USC 119(e)(1)]. Thus, it is mandated that measures are put into place for highway assets that may potentially fail with aging. In the past, retaining walls were such assets that were often excluded from inventory programs and were regarded as non-critical or "lost" assets. With the recognition that wall failures may be detrimental to the roadway and the surroundings, and may pose a potential hazard to the safety of the public, several highway agencies have begun to incorporate retaining walls into their inventory and inspection programs. The primary goal of the research described herein was to develop a systematic means for cataloging and assessing the condition of permanent highway retaining structures for the NCDOT.
The research products developed as a result of this study include a literature review of highway agencies with the most notable contributions in wall asset management, the development of data collection forms for inventory and condition assessment, a pilot study of (15) geographically distributed wall locations, short concise summaries of each field inspection, a field application study of (32) walls, and the design and development of a prototype database. Each of these products will be useful in providing the NCDOT the ability to establish effective and sustainable retaining wall maintenance and replacement priorities is support of MAP-21
