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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

The impact map of road management

Tienpidon vaikutuskartta

Impact evaluation has become a key method of evaluating the effectiveness of the public sector. Goals are set at all levels of the public sector, in areas ranging from government platform policies to the performance targets set for individual government offices, the success of which is subsequently evaluated using preset indicators. Despite this, the impacts achieved in the various administrative sectors have not been comprehensively outlined, and the indicators used for measuring them need to be refined; a universally accepted method of evaluating the impacts is not yet in place. The above mentioned deficiencies can also be found in the administration of roads. The problem has been that impacts, and (especially) goals have often been described purely qualitatively, and in a way that is too generalised. When evaluating impacts, the concepts under observation are abstract, such as the structure of society, the needs of industry, and regional development. If five separate planners define these concepts independently, the result will be five separate definitions. A useful evaluation of impacts will only be possible once a widely accepted understanding has been established of what the impacts of traffic and road maintenance are. The impacts must be conceptualised and operationalised in order to enable them to be measured. The work will define and describe the goals and the impacts of road maintenance, and expand these from a purely descriptive level to more comprehensive concepts and phenomena. The conceptualisation of impacts is achieved by cutting top-level impacts in order to achieve partial impacts further down the chain that are easier to define. This is called the operationalisation of impacts. Conceptualisation that stems from top-level impacts is helping to realise road maintenance targets and is creating the conditions for measuring the impacts. Subsequently, criteria and indicators will be defined and described for these concepts and phenomena. Finally, attempts will be made to establish which concepts and phenomena the individual road maintenance products being measured will have an impact on. This work will result in an interactive "impact map" that will enable us to move from broad concepts towards finely defined concepts and phenomena, and vice versa, thereby linking the impacts of road maintenance products with broad concepts. The chains that start from broad areas of impact and end with the indicators have five stages. Although causal chains are the backbone of operationalisation and help to outline the impacts, the actual content of the operationalisation consists of the definition of the chain's different stages. Qualitative descriptions have been formed for each box that is visible in the chain. These descriptions also enable the operationalisation of those criteria that would otherwise be difficult to measure directly. Finally, the work that has been carried out will be used as a basis for developing indicators for all the criteria. The impact chart consists of 7 upper-level impact areas, which are divided into 23 defined sub-areas, and further into 72 smaller sub-areas. 98 criteria and 149 indicators have been established for the impacts. This report may be found at http://alk.tiehallinto.fi/julkaisut/pdf2/3201026-v-vaikutuskartta.pdf

Language

  • Finnish

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Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01081661
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: TRL
  • ISBN: 978-951-803-813-2
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Nov 29 2007 1:01PM