What is Digitization 4.0?
The development of new technologies is changing the world on a scale not seen before. Social scientists define this progress as the 4th industrial revolution and use the term “Industry 4.0” to describe these trends. “Industry 4.0” is a name given to the current developments of automation and data exchange in technologies. Global data networks like the world-wide-web, are influencing the way of decision-making, including benefits but also different risks.
The trend of digitalization can also be seen in asset management. We see it in the design or maintenance of new or existing assets and in the day to day tasks of road operation.
The Challenge of Digitization
The basis for digitalization is data. We have observed numerous data collection activities in the past starting with pavements, bridges and tunnels. Inventory data was taken from drawings and plans, and often stored in complex asset specific database systems. The first asset management systems started as individual solutions (PMS, BMS, etc.) hosting data specific to the asset category and the respective tasks. Analysis solutions were used to analyze single assets using ranking or prioritization models to define the necessary maintenance treatments. Only a few applications offered the possibility to link data from different assets or from different phases of the whole life-cycle process.
The conversion of information into data is still an ongoing task, especially for those asset categories, which are showing less importance in the maintenance processes. Thus, the collection of (new) data is still a challenge in moving forward for road administrations, although most of this data are stored somewhere in the digital world.
The basis for successful digitalization is a clear understanding of the different life-cycle phases of road infrastructure assets, considering the data needs and requirements:
- Planning and Design phase - is the starting point of digitalization. Digital planning is state of the technology almost everywhere, where the basic information about the inventory, the construction, the materials, and more will be produced;
- Construction phase - uses data from the planning and design phase and extends it with actual information from the construction;
- Maintenance phase - covers most of the service-life of an asset. Changes in inventory and condition must be collected and integrated into the process. A holistic asset management framework covers both, the operational and the maintenance tasks. It includes all kind of activities, from routine maintenance to heavy maintenance, but also organizational activities like planning of inspections, data implementation, measuring of performance, etc.;
- Reconstruction and Recycling phase - characterizes the end of the service-life of an asset. The knowledge about actual materials becomes a decisive factor from the recycling and the new planning point of view.
A successful entry into digitalization requires the use of digital information in all phases. At the moment, the maintenance phase is often a stand-alone solution, starting with the basic data collection as the initial task. Of course, many assets have never been digitally planned or designed and existing (old) data formats do not fulfill the requirements of data storage in the maintenance phase. These problems must be solved in any case and will be one of the major challenges for digitalization.
The Benefits of Digitalization
Digitalization is a starting point and not the solution. The planning of maintenance activities, the estimation of the maintenance needs, the reduction of maintenance backlogs, etc. are still the objectives of asset management. Digitalization is an instrument, providing an objective and understandable base for the different levels of users (engineers, managers, customers, etc.). The benefit is strongly related to an efficient use of data. Digitalization is more than data storage, it includes the use of data in the assessment and analysis processes to the maximum possible extent. Thus, the benefit of digitalization can be summarized as follows:
- provision of digital information for managing the assets;
- support of decision processes on different levels (project, network, strategic);
- improvement of internal and external communication;
- assessment and analysis of actual situation, extrapolation (prediction) of future situation for different what-if-scenarios;
- combination of data from different sources (interoperability);
- controlling, adjustment and improvement of road infrastructure maintenance and operation processes;
- understanding of relationships and mapping of life-cycle phases;
- etc.
The Risks of Digitalization
Digitalization includes complex processes and different risks need to be managed from the beginning. Especially the quality and quantity of data is often the critical factor for a successful implementation. The main risks can be seen as follows:
- data quality,
- data quantity (from Big Data to Smart Data),
- management of incorrect and incomplete data,
- data sources using different formats and/or referencing systems,
- data accessibility and security,
- performance of asset management software solutions,
- data communication, visualization, user interfaces.
It is necessary to analyze the risks before starting a implementation process. In many cases the organizational structure of the road administration offers an additional risk, which is independent from the technologies to be applied but a decisive factor for the use of the new technologies in the context of digitalization.