Social Return on Investment as an Asset Management Metric

State and local departments of transportation (DOT) have been encouraged by the Federal Highway Administration to implement a Total Asset Management (TAM) program as a tool to more efficiently distribute their limited resources. To evaluate and prioritize asset maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement options, DOTs must identify specific key performance indicators (KPI) to measure asset condition, traffic volume, and cost efficiency for comparison with other assets in their networks. Each state has specific needs, which require the agency’s TAM program to be tailored specifically to the requirements of the local economy. Such is the case for states where the transportation network is a key contributor to a broad-based agricultural economy. Unlike highly urbanized states, agricultural states are dependent on their low volume rural roads to sustain the state’s economy. The paper analyzes the social and economic impact that asset preservation decisions have in Iowa, a typical agricultural state, and proposes a methodology for calculating the Social Return on Investment (SROI) to better measure the economic impact that the rural bridges have in the transportation of the soy and corn across states like Iowa. The paper finds that the areas with highest yield of corn and soy in Iowa are also the areas with the greatest percentage of rural deficient bridges, confirming the need to integrate a socioeconomic metric into the suite of condition and capacity KPIs to ensure asset management resource allocation decisions do not unintentionally neglect an important sector of the state’s economy, merely because the volumes of traffic are so much lower than in urban regions.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABC40 Transportation Asset Management.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Miller, Maria Catalina
  • Gransberg, Douglas D
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Asset management; Case studies; Performance measurement; Return on investment; Rural areas; Social factors; State departments of transportation; Traffic volume
• Identifier Terms: U.S. Federal Highway Administration
• Geographic Terms: Iowa
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I60: Maintenance;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01515407
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0399
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 24 2014 8:42AM