Statistical Analysis of ROOFER Database from 21 Army Installations: Assessment of Army Membrane Roofing Inventory and Effects of Various Factors on Roof Condition.

The ROOFER Engineered Management System EMS, developed by the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories USACERL, enables Army installations to capture roofing inspection data in a single electronic database. The automated component of the EMS, called MicroROOFER, processes these data to help the user evaluate, prioritize, and budget roofing maintenance and repair needs. To assist in developing future enhancements for ROOFER, USACERL acquired MicroROOFER databases from 21 Army installations that have implemented the ROOFER EMS. From these separate databases researchers created a master data set containing inventory data, inspection data, and condition indices for 3059 roofing sections. The researchers conducted a statistical analysis of the data set to characterize the inventory sample and determine how the roof condition depends on age and various design and construction factors. The data also were used to demonstrate the use of specially developed agedegradation curves for determining condition percentiles as functions of age. The analysis confirmed that age is by far the most important predictor of roof section condition. Other influential predictors were surfacing, flashing type, drainage, and membrane type.