The structure and functioning of network industries have a great effect on the well-being of society, being also prerequisites for economic growth and productivity. Social goals, industry trends, ownership structures, and the economic environment play an important role in the development of such networks. Most network industries enjoy a dominant position on the market. Their performance is steered by national regulatory authorities via price control and quality requirements. For this the regulatory authorities need besides financial indicators feedback on the technical performance of the provided services. The vast development in sensing, data transmission, and collection technologies, as well as in analytical methods, has made it possible and feasible to acquire the needed feedback. Such comprehensive data enable to construct a performance measurement system to regulate, develop, and administer the networks. This paper explores the possibility of developing an overall technical performance index and presents a relevant concept. The suggested overall index would be an additional regulatory tool to evaluate the performance of network industries and their compliance with consumers' requirements. The aim of the proposed concept is to establish empirically verifiable feedback between a given state of technology, state of institutional governance, and the performance of network industries.
The design, building and maintenance of national roads constitute a substantial part of the government budget. Taking into account the magnitude and importance of these investments, the expedience, efficiency and sustainability of roads are of great public interest and their performance should be measured. For performance assessment of roads or road sections it is important to gather data about different key performance indicators. Flexible pavements deteriorate under traffic loads and climate effects. This effect depends on the technology and materials of the road, but the greatest effects depend on traffic loads and volumes. Systems can be developed to give information about tire wearing and its impact on the pavement wearing. To ensure traffic safety, especially in countries with cold climate, it is very important to gather continuously data about tire tread wear. New technologies have made it possible to integrate the measuring of tire tread wear and tire type on roads continuously and present new opportunities to monitor and analyse conditions of tires. This paper is part of a road performance measurement system presenting a concept for input data collecting.
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