Road Vulnerability Index

One component of North Carolina’s motor carrier enforcement program is focused on overweight trucks. The aim of this enforcement is to protect the State’s roadway infrastructure, and as such, it is important to identify those facilities and roadway segments that are most susceptible to damage from overweight vehicles.

To this end, a quantitative Road Vulnerability Index (RVI) was developed.  Vulnerability is being expressed as a function of truck volume, pavement condition, and bridge condition. By weighting these factors, vulnerability values can be assigned to road segments statewide. Vulnerable road segments are then ‘mapped’ in the same GIS environment used to capture and display motor carrier enforcement activities for overweight violations.

In addition to providing information to aid in the spatial assignment of weight enforcement activities, the GIS-based RVI provides a useful tool for the visual analysis and integration of roadway maintenance and operations concerns across various departments of the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT)

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