Database Design and Integration Framework for Risk Management for State Highway Agencies

Risk-based transportation asset management program (TAMP) gives transportation agencies the ability to have a mechanism for documenting and measuring risks to their operations, as this will help drive the potential mitigation activities. The monitoring and updating of the risk management process is essential to TAMP as it will ensure that the financial plan and investment strategy components of the TAMP are suitable to ensure that agencies continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities. However, a review of the initial TAMP documents submitted by U.S. transportation agencies showed that although risks are acknowledged, there does not exist a clear line of sight between risk management and agencies’ programming. This is the result of a lack of cross-asset risk integration. As a result, the paper proposes a data integration framework for developing a cross-asset comprehensive database for risk management that integrates many of the common risks that state highway agencies have identified in the initial TAMP documents. In addition, the paper proposes modifications to the risk identification methodology that leverage the collaborative aspects of risk management to quantify risk in monetary terms.