Implementing the Austroads Road Asset Data Standard
Austroads is implementing the harmonised Road Asset Data Standard (the Data Standard) following a decade of research and development. Austroads’ representatives are engaging with stakeholders nationwide to encourage its adoption.
The Data Standard is part of a national, multi-stage project that aims to standardise and automate the collection and sharing of road asset information, making it easier and more cost-effective for asset managers and owners to analyse and compare road asset data.
Currently, road asset owners and managers collect similar, yet slightly different, information on road assets. The data is maintained in discrete siloes which makes it difficult to compare road asset data, identify best practice and reduce the cost of network maintenance.
As a comprehensive reference tool, the Data Standard enables all organisations involved in the road asset management sector to use a common language when collecting, reporting on and sharing road asset data.
More broadly, implementing a national road asset data standard helps to:
- improve Australia’s understanding of best practice road maintenance and asset renewal investment
- ensure funding is targeted appropriately and achieves desired outcomes
- facilitate reforms designed to improve the road network and road access
- create a common platform to develop next-generation transport solutions and tools
- streamline communication between different road managers and organisations.
This multi-faceted project began in 2014 and has benefited from input from all levels of government and industry.
Austroads released the latest version of the Data Standard (version 4) in October 2022.
The Data Standard is designed for road asset owners and managers to consistently and efficiently collect and report on road data.
As a comprehensive reference tool, the Data Standard identifies 988 data measures that describe Australia’s road network and road infrastructure. The Data Standard encompasses:
- road inventory (including location identifiers and construction materials)
- bridge inventory (including all road inventory plus span information and access restrictions)
- asset condition (including performance and works costs)
- valuation (including current construction costs and financial information)
- traffic information (including volumes and growth by vehicle class).
It has been designed to provide:
- a common understanding of the meaning of road and road-related data
- consistency in data definition and format
- a list of data measures that support road management and investment activities
- guidance for appropriate levels of sophistication in asset location referencing, asset data description and asset planning practices
- guidance on priority data sets (PDS)
- details around common data items to ensure consistent application.
Smaller PDS have been developed to reflect the needs of local government and state road authorities, these contain 216 and 239 data measures respectively.
Data Standard Frequently Asked Questions
The Road Asset Data Standard (the Data Standard) is a reference document that provides a common language for the management of, and investment in, roads and road infrastructure in Australia and New Zealand.
The Data Standard is the result of almost a decade of research and development by Austroads’ members. It covers:
- road inventory (including location identifiers and construction materials)
- bridge inventory (including all road inventory plus span information and access restrictions)
- asset condition (including performance and works costs)
- valuation (including current construction costs and financial information)
- traffic information (including volumes and growth by vehicle class).
The Data Standard is designed to provide:
- a common understanding of the meaning of road and road-related data
- consistency in data definition and format
- a list of data measures that support road management and investment decisions
- guidance for appropriate levels of sophistication in asset location referencing, asset data description and asset planning practices
- guidance on important (priority) data sets, and
- detail on common data items to ensure consistent application.
The Data Standard is a foundational step in supporting large-scale reforms that require a common language to describe and quantify roads and analyse and share data in a meaningful way. These reforms include the National Service Level Standards, National Freight Data Hub, Heavy Vehicle Infrastructure Rating and Heavy Vehicle Road Reform.
The Data Standard is intended for use by all road asset owners, managers, road network funding agencies, stakeholders and service providers in the planning, delivery, operation, maintenance, disposal and reporting of asset management functions across the road asset portfolio.
Parties involved in the planning, construction, maintenance and upgrade of roads will increasingly be expected to adopt and use the Data Standard.
More broadly, the Data Standard may be of interest to any road industry stakeholder who relies on data for road research, policy development, expenditure comparisons, funding approvals, supporting national reforms, national reporting, innovation, shared services and inter-organisation communications.
Roads are a vital part of Australia’s infrastructure, connecting people and goods. Australia’s vast distances and widely dispersed centres make it peculiarly reliant on road freight. Compared to other modern, western economies the goods Australians want typically travel further and to fewer people. Around 26,000 tonne-kilometres of freight is moved annually for every person in Australia.[1]
The road network is also responsible for the bulk of passenger travel in Australia (313 billion passenger-kilometres were travelled in 2017-18). [2] Road transport activity generated around $137.2b in economic output in 2015/16[3] and represents around 3% of Australia’s GDP.[4]
Adopting a standard enables a consistent, harmonised language for the road asset management sector, ultimately supporting better decision making and asset management practices at the local and national level.
The local level
Local councils are responsible for about 77% of Australia’s road network by length and more than 22,000 bridges.[5]
With accurate data the asset owner can predict the lifespan of the asset and the value it is expected to return. The value could be economic (such as providing freight corridors) or social (making it easier to connect in person with family and friends).
Quantifying lifespan and value is important in justifying the up-front costs of planning, designing and constructing a road. Good data equips the asset owner to make decisions about preserving, augmenting, replacing or retiring an asset.
Employing the Data Standard allows road managers to more efficiently share and report on network data.
The national level
At the national level, adoption of the Data Standard is foundational to sector-wide oversight that can identify best practice in asset management and facilitate informed, targeted investment and maintenance decisions.
“The ‘big picture’ objective…is a sector-wide reduction in per kilometre maintenance and construction costs for like assets. The approach…is to unlock the value in previously siloed road asset data discreetly held by various local and state governments by creating a …unifying data standard that enables the collection and exchange of consistent and comparable road asset data, from which better practices can be identified and shared.”[6]
The Data Standard is an essential building-block in policies relating to infrastructure investment, road safety, road pricing and charging reform, national standards for road users, heavy vehicle access and disaster planning and recovery.
[1] Australian Logistics Council, The Economic Significance of the Australian Logistics Industry, 2014
[2] BIS Oxford Economics, 2021 Update: the Value of Australia’s Roads, August 2021
[3] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Transport Economic Account: An Experimental Transport Satellite Account
[4] Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development, Transport and Communications, Heavy Vehicle Road Reform Consultation Paper, Proposed Changes to the Way hv charges are set and invested, June 2020
[5] Australian Local Government Association, 2021 National State of the Assets Report: our assets, our opportunity, 2021
[6] Austroads, Benefits Realisation Plan for the Road Asset Data Quality Program, 2022, p. 4
The Data Standard reflects the data measures required for effective road management and investment. It contains 988 data measures categorised into 14 function groups. These function groups are described in the table below.
RADS function groups
| Function group | Description |
|---|---|
| Network | The road network is comprised of links, link sections, networks, nodes and roads. Collectively, these components are the road ‘network’. |
| Classification | Roads are classified according to their economic value, social value and their functional classification. Economic value includes such things as the value of the freight carried on the road (RADS 8.2.4) while social value includes if the road services a local hospital (RADS 8.2.8). There are six functional classifications for roads including national, regional, arterial and primary collector. (For more information on functional classification see the One Network Road Classification). |
| Inventory | Inventory refers to the assets on, between and around the road network. They include fences, pavements, truck rest bays, traffic signals, bridges and public art. |
| Condition | Condition relates to the state of the road and how it is wearing. It includes pavement cracking, deflection (the vertical movement of the road when subject to load), roughness, rutting and texture. |
| Demand | Demand relates to the level of actual and desired usage of the asset. Factors such as population growth mean that demand for the asset, and its projected lifespan, can change over time. |
| Utilisation | Utilisation measures the volume of different types of users of the asset including pedestrians and cyclists. ‘Annual average daily traffic’ is the standard measure of utilisation. |
| Criticality | Criticality considers the importance of roads in the delivery of organisational obligations and objectives. The organisational objectives may include economic development, economic sustainability, safety, preservation of life and community welfare. |
| Risk | Risk is a measure of the likelihood and consequence of something going wrong on or with the asset. Sources of risk are varied and can include climate change, flood, fire and dangerous goods spillage. |
| Resilience | Resilience is a measure of the asset’s capacity to ‘bounce back’ from adversity. Road resilience is measured in terms of:
|
| Performance (asset) | There are several different ways of measuring an asset’s performance. This function refers to the technical performance of the asset, i.e. did it fulfil the function it was designed for? For example, did a bridge structure safely support the volume of heavy vehicle traffic it was designed to withstand? |
| Performance (financial) | Financial performance refers to the monetary value yielded by the asset and the value of the asset itself. It can be measured in various ways such as return on investment (ROI), cost benefit analysis (CBA), asset renewal funding ratio etc. |
| Performance (service) | Service performance relates to the experience of the end-user of the road and their level of satisfaction with that experience. Perceptions of performance may differ depending on travel mode. For example, a truck driver might have a different opinion to a cyclist about the serviceability of the same road. |
| Access | Access refers to the type of vehicle that may safely utilise the asset. Not all roads, for example, can safely accommodate over-width or over-dimension vehicles. Understanding what the road network can safely cope with is important for the vehicle access and permitting system. |
| Works and costs | Works and costs relate to planning, describing and capturing maintenance and forward works and the associated costs. |
No.
While some of the data measures are commonly used and understood (such as the classification function group), not all are in common usage at this time.
In order to reflect the needs of specific user groups, the 988 data measures are divided into priority data sets (PDS). Each PDS is intended for use by a specific user group.
The table below shows the priority data sets that currently exist, their intent, the user groups they support and the statutory reporting obligations they reflect.
Priority data sets
| Level | Priority data set | Intent | User group | Reporting supported by PDS | Number of data measures included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Core priority data set | This PDS represents the most commonly used and collected road asset data. This supports minimum asset management and legislated asset management responsibilities. This information is not expected to change, or will only change rarely. | Local government /State road authorities | State Grants Commissions | 141 |
| 2 | Extension 1 | Includes the Core PDS plus the most frequently used ‘condition’ and ‘performance (service)’ data. The condition measures include for cracking, pavement deflection and rutting path, outer wheel path, (between right and left wheel paths). This PDS includes further information about bridge condition. | Local government /State road authorities | State Grants Commissions | 175 |
| 3 | Extension 2 | Includes the Reporting Extension PDS plus the most frequently used ‘works’, ‘costs’, ‘performance (asset)’ and ‘access’ data. This PDS contains a focus on forward works program data elements from the ‘works’ and ‘costs’ functional group. It includes ‘performance (asset) data items that are often included in network performance reporting and analysis. Finally, it includes data related to access. | Local government /State road authorities | State Grants Commissions | 216 |
| 4 | State road authority PDS | This PDS includes all 3 previous sets plus extra data items of interest such as expanded condition data and data for bridges and tunnels. | State road authorities |
| 227 |
| 5 | State road authority PDS | This PDS includes all 4 previous sets plus Information that is likely to be of use to state agencies but not local governments. | State road authorities |
| 239 |
The figure below represents this information in diagram form. As priorities change over time, the priority data sets will evolve to better reflect the needs of users.
Graphic representation of the priority data sets
The Data Standard is compiled and vetted by the Austroads Assets Task Force, which is part of Austroads’ broader Transport Infrastructure Program.
The Assets Task Force has representatives from state and territory road agencies, the National Transport Commission, the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, and the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).*
*Currently ALGA is represented by the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA).
The current version of the Standard is version 4 which was released in October 2022.
Yes.
The Data Standard has been under development since 2014 and has gone by other names including the Road Data Harmonisation project, the Standard for Road Management and Investment in Australia and New Zealand and Australasian Road Asset Data Standard.
The original standard (version 1), was published in November 2016.
Yes.
The data measures within the Data Standard reflect established industry standards such as ISO 5500, the Austroads Guides to Asset Management (AGAM), the Australian Infrastructure Financial Management Manual (IPWEA 2016) and the New Zealand One Network Road Classification.
There are no immediate plans to mandate the adoption of the Data Standard.
Voluntary uptake of the Data Standard will be driven through:
- making a strong case for a single, common road language
- increasing awareness of the Data Standard, including in allied government projects such as Heavy Vehicle Road Reform.
Road managers do not need to change asset management systems in order to adopt the Data Standard.
Roads and road infrastructure have existed for a long time and asset management systems have built up around them. These systems may be working well for the asset owners and managers and there is no imperative to change them.
As a reference document, the Data Standard can be applied to any system or platform.
A machine-readable version of the Data Standard is available for comma separated value (CSV) data. The CSV format is compatible with commonly existing databases and enterprise resource planning systems.
Updated 30 August 2023.