glossary
Pavement Distress Survey Methodology
A pavement distress survey systematically identifies, classifies, and measures each distress type, severity, and extent on a pavement section…
JUN 17 2026
18 MIN
PAVEMENT ASSESSMENT · ASTM D6433
A rating per section, not a folder of photographs
The scan finds the distress. The assessment is what turns thousands of located defects into a condition rating per section and a repair list in the order the money should be spent.
0–100
condition scale of the reported proxy
19 + 15
asphalt and concrete distress types in ASTM D6433
RTK ±1 cm
position carried by every recorded distress
per section
rating and repair priority are reported
FIT
Who this is for
This service is bought by the person who has to answer two questions in the same meeting. What condition is the pavement in, and which sections get money this year. It fits an asset manager who already runs a pavement management system and needs a condition input that arrives in the same shape every year.
For
Aerodrome operators who owe their authority a documented pavement condition record and currently rebuild it by walking the surface.
Airport engineering and maintenance managers deciding which sections to treat this budget year and which can wait.
Asset managers who already run a pavement management system and need a repeatable condition input for it.
Not for
Projects that require a formal ASTM D6433 or D5340 survey signed by a certified inspector, such as federally funded rehabilitation work.
Structural capacity questions, which need bearing strength testing rather than a surface condition rating.
Aerodromes wanting only raw imagery, which is delivered by the runway surface scan product instead.
JUDGED ON DELIVERY
Outcomes and acceptance criteria
Three outcomes are what the service is judged on, and each has a state you can check on delivery rather than a promise you have to trust.
01
A defensible condition figure per section
Every section you agreed to have assessed comes back with a Pavement Condition Index proxy on the 0 to 100 scale, the distress inventory the figure was computed from, and the section area it applies to.
Acceptance
Open any section, and the deduct inputs behind its number are visible.
02
A repair list in priority order
Sections are ordered by condition and by the treatment band they fall into, so the list separates sections that still respond to preventive treatment from sections that have passed into rehabilitation.
Acceptance
Every section on the list carries a reason, not just a rank.
03
A baseline the next visit can be compared against
Section boundaries, distress categories and positions are recorded so that the following assessment reports change rather than a fresh opinion.
Acceptance
The section identifiers in this report are the identifiers used in the next one.
What the service does not undertake to produce is a treatment design or a cost estimate for the repairs. Those are engineering decisions that belong to your designer and your contractor, and a condition assessment that quietly turns into a works specification is one that nobody can audit. And it is the wrong purchase if all you want is imagery, because the runway surface scan
delivers that on its own.
SCOPE AND DELIVERABLES
What is inside the assessment
Each deliverable with the party that owns it and the state it has to reach before the assessment is accepted.
11 parameters
ASTM D6433 categories
Deliverable
What it contains
Owner
01
Agreed section map
The network split into branches and sections, with boundaries fixed before capture and reused on every later assessment.
Owner
TarmacView, signed off by the operator
02
Distress inventory
Every detected distress with its type, severity band, extent and surveyed position on the surface.
Owner
TarmacView
03
Condition rating per section
A Pavement Condition Index proxy on the 0 to 100 scale with the distress densities that produced it.
Owner
TarmacView
04
Ranked repair list
Sections ordered by condition and treatment band, each with the distresses that drive its position.
Owner
TarmacView
05
Change report
On a repeat assessment, the rating movement per section and the distresses that grew, appeared or were repaired.
Owner
TarmacView, from the previous baseline
06
Export for asset systems
The section table and distress inventory in the format the receiving pavement management system reads.
Owner
Format nominated by the operator
07
Same-day hazard notice
Anything that reads as an immediate operational hazard, reported on the day of capture rather than with the assessment.
Owner
TarmacView
08
Airside access and coordination
Tower coordination, escort where required, and the movement windows the capture is flown in.
Owner
Aerodrome operator
09
Treatment design and costing
Not included. The assessment says what condition the pavement is in, not what to build.
Owner
Excluded
10
Structural evaluation
Not included. Bearing strength needs load testing or coring rather than a surface survey.
Owner
Excluded
11
Friction and texture measurement
Not included. Continuous friction measuring equipment is a separate instrument and a separate visit.
Owner
Excluded
Distress categories follow ASTM D6433. The reported index is a visual proxy calibrated against ground-surveyed results and is not a formal ASTM D6433 or D5340 survey.
DELIVERY · 6 STEPS
From section map to ranked repair list
01
Scoping call
You name the surfaces to assess and whether this is a first baseline or a repeat. We agree the section split, the export format and who signs off. Output is a scope note. If the section split cannot be agreed, the assessment does not start, because a rating against boundaries nobody accepts is worthless.
02
Mission build
The capture is planned from the surface geometry and the camera optics, so ground resolution and overlap are computed rather than assumed. Output is a validated mission and a capture window request to your tower.
03
Capture
Flown between aircraft movements. About an hour on site per runway, with taxiways and aprons added in proportion to area. If weather closes the window, the mission is reflown unchanged rather than rebuilt.
04
Detection and classification
Imagery goes through the surface analysis pipeline, which segments distress and classifies it by type and severity band. Detections below the confidence floor are held for human review rather than dropped silently.
05
Rating and ranking
Distress density is computed inside each agreed section and converted to a condition proxy on the 0 to 100 scale. Sections are then ordered by condition and treatment band.
06
Delivery and walkthrough
The report, the inventory and the export land together, and we walk your engineer through the sections that moved. Anything disputed is re-examined against the retained imagery rather than re-flown.
EVIDENCE AND CAPABILITY
The claim worth checking is the rating
The index reported here is a proxy. It comes from automated analysis of aerial imagery, and it is calibrated against ground-surveyed ASTM D6433 results so that its output tracks the standard method. It is not the standard method. ASTM D6433 asks a trained inspector to walk each sample unit, measure quantities by hand, read deduct values off published curves and run the corrected deduct value iteration. A camera flying overhead does none of that. What it does instead is see every square metre rather than a sample, at the same detection threshold everywhere, on every visit.
That trade is the whole argument. A manual survey is more authoritative on the sample units it covers and silent on the rest. An imaging assessment is weaker per unit and complete across the network, and it repeats. Where a funding programme or a reporting duty names the standard, the manual survey is still what satisfies it, and the two are not substitutes.
The distress families the assessment reports are the ones a surface image can carry: cracking in all its orientations, alligator cracking , raveling and weathering, potholes and patching, and joint distress including spalling and sealant loss. Loose material on the surface is reported as foreign object debris rather than as a pavement defect, because it is an operational finding with a different owner and a different clock.
Retained raw imagery is what makes a disputed rating checkable. If your engineer disagrees with a section figure, the frames that produced it are still there and the distress inventory can be re-examined against them. A number in a PDF with nothing behind it cannot be re-examined at all.
HOW THE PRICE IS BUILT
Four things move the quote
There is no published rate for this service and there is not going to be one, because the work scales with your pavement rather than with a line item, and a published figure would be wrong for most of the aerodromes that read it.
EUR
per aerodrome per assessment
excl. VAT
EU
Checked 2026-09-04
Cost driver 01
Paved area
Capture time and processing both scale with it.
Cost driver 02
Surfaces and section split
A runway split into four sections and one split into twenty are different reports off the same flight.
Cost driver 03
Baseline or repeat
A repeat reuses the section map and the previous inventory and costs less than the assessment that created them.
Cost driver 04
Travel
Shows up as travel and not as a different assessment.
Tell us the aerodrome and the surfaces and you get a figure and a date back. The pricing page
sets out the shape of a visit that combines pavement with the lighting inspection, which is the cheaper way to buy both.
EACH WITH AN OWNER
Risks and dependencies
Three things can stop or degrade an assessment, and each has an owner.
Owner · WEATHER
Weather and surface state
Standing water, snow cover and heavy contamination hide the surface from a camera. The mission is reflown rather than rated through the obstruction. This is nobody's fault and it is the most common reason a date moves.
Owner · OPERATOR
Access
The capture needs tower coordination and, at most aerodromes, an escort. If the movement windows do not appear, the visit does not happen. That dependency sits with the aerodrome operator and it is worth confirming before travel is booked.
Owner · BOTH, AT SCOPING
Section agreement
A rating is a statement about a defined area. If the section boundaries change between assessments, the time series breaks and the change report cannot be produced. We freeze the boundaries at scoping for exactly this reason, and changing them later is a decision with a cost rather than an edit.
Accountability sits with TarmacView for the capture, the classification and the rating, and with the aerodrome operator for access, for the section map sign-off and for what is done with the repair list. Nothing on this page is a compliance statement. Whether a given condition record satisfies a particular authority is a question for that authority.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is the PCI you report a formal ASTM D6433 value?
- No. It is a visual proxy derived from automated image analysis and calibrated against ground-surveyed D6433 results, so it correlates with a formal PCI but is not one. A formal D6433 or D5340 survey requires a trained inspector to walk each sample unit, measure distress quantities by hand and compute the corrected deduct values. Where a funding programme or a legal reporting duty names the standard, the formal survey is still the instrument that satisfies it. The proxy is what lets you assess the whole network every year instead of a sample every five.
- How is the pavement divided into sections?
- By construction and use, the same way ASTM D6433 divides a network into branches, sections and sample units. A runway is normally split at construction joints, at surface type changes and at the touchdown zones, because those areas take different loading and deteriorate at different rates. Taxiways and aprons are split by geometry and by the traffic they carry. The split is agreed with you before the flight and then frozen, because a rating is only comparable between visits if the section boundaries stay in the same place.
- How long does the aerodrome have to give us?
- Capture is flown between aircraft movements in coordination with the tower, so no closure is booked for it. Budget about an hour on site per runway. Taxiways and aprons add time in proportion to their area rather than doubling the visit. The processing and rating happen afterwards, off site, so the time you give up is the capture window and nothing else.
- What distress types do you classify?
- The asphalt and concrete distress families that ASTM D6433 defines and that are visible from above: cracking of all orientations, block and fatigue cracking, potholes, patching, raveling and weathering, polished aggregate, joint spalling and sealant loss, corner breaks, scaling and faulting. Distresses that are not surface-visible are outside what any imaging method can rate. Rutting and depressions are reported where the surface model shows them, and are flagged as geometry rather than as a surface defect.
- Can this feed our pavement management system?
- Yes. The output is a table of sections with a rating, a distress inventory and a georeferenced position for every finding, which is the shape a pavement management system expects as a condition input. The section identifiers stay stable between assessments so a time series builds up rather than eight unrelated snapshots. Export formats are agreed at the scoping call, because the receiving system decides the format rather than we do.
- What happens if the assessment finds something urgent?
- Anything that reads as an immediate operational hazard, such as loose material on a movement area or an open spall in the touchdown zone, is reported on the day of capture rather than held for the assessment report. That is a safety notification and not a rating. The full assessment follows the normal schedule. This is the one part of the deliverable that does not wait for processing.
References
- astm-d6433
- ASTM D6433-24, Standard Practice for Roads and Parking Lots Pavement Condition Index Surveys ASTM International
- faa-ac-150-5380-6
- AC 150/5380-6, Guidelines and Procedures for Maintenance of Airport Pavements Federal Aviation Administration
- icao-doc-9137-p9
- Doc 9137, Airport Services Manual, Part 9: Airport Maintenance Practices International Civil Aviation Organization
- icao-annex-14-v1
- Annex 14 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Volume I: Aerodrome Design and Operations International Civil Aviation Organization
- tarmacview-pricing
- Pricing: one visit, every light and every surface TarmacView
Reviewed by Štefan Moravík · 2026-09-04
Keep reading
03 PAGESLearn more
products
Road Pavement Condition Assessment for Municipalities
Drone and ground imagery turned into a defect map, a condition rating and a priority list for municipal roads, with a 3D model and a report in two…
SEP 04 2026
9 MIN
blog
Runway Surface Inspection: What a Drone Scan Actually Sees
What a drone pavement scan resolves on a runway, what it cannot, how ground sample distance sets the smallest measurable crack, and how a scan becomes…
AUG 15 2026
11 MIN
Get Started
Get a scope note and a price within two working days
Send the aerodrome, the surfaces you want assessed and whether a condition record already exists. That is enough to scope. You get a written scope note and a price back within two working days, and the scope note is not binding until you accept it.