Judy A. Perkins

Investigating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for Linear Asset Management

Linear assets including roads, pipelines, and railroad tracks are defined assets whose lengths play a critical role in their maintenance. Linear assets, along with their features, which include traffic lights, number of lanes, speed limits, guardrails, and highway billboards, are hard to physically access and, therefore, update inventory information files that were previously captured. To address this problem, some transportation agencies are investigating technologies that will assist in solving this asset inventory problem. The primary focus of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of using radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology as a means of gathering, verifying, and storing information for linear assets. The study investigates confluence factors that affect the performance of RFID. The factors investigated include driving speed and tag location on signposts, delineators, and guardrails. The results indicate that for the three vehicle speeds tested (10 mph, 20 mph, 30 mph), tag readability decreased with an increase in speed.