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The demands for delivering highway services keep growing worldwide. However, funding from government and public agencies alone cannot cover the capital needed to operate and maintain existing highway systems, much less to construct new ones. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are an innovative funding mechanism for highway agencies to use private capital and expertise in transportation infrastructure projects so as to increase funding options to bridge the budget gap. Even though parties involved in PPPs take different roles and responsibilities, there are still risks taken or shared by the public and private sectors. In particular, assessing risks associated with the potential returns of investments is of great importance to the private and public sectors. This paper presents a methodological framework for assessing the investment risks of PPP toll highway projects, which may help decision makers. The financial viability associated with the components of a project is considered and analyzed, and the Monte Carlo simulation technique is applied to evaluate the overall project risks. Finally, a numerical case study is conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. The risk analysis provides statistical distribution of investment returns for the project under analysis, which will supply decision makers with direct information to estimate the project’s overall financial risks and develop corresponding risk control measures. The risk simulation results are interpreted so that quantitative information can be provided to agencies to establish investment decision criteria.

PurposeResource allocation is essential to infrastructure management. The purpose of this study is to develop a methodological framework for resource allocation that takes interdependencies among infrastructure systems into consideration to minimize the overall impact of infrastructure network disruptions due to extreme events.Design/methodology/approachTaking advantage of agent-based modeling techniques, the proposed methodology estimates the interdependent effects of a given infrastructure failure which are then used to optimize resource allocation such that the network-level resilience is maximized.FindingsThe findings of the study show that allocating resources with the proposed methodology, where optimal infrastructure reinforcement interventions are implemented, can improve the resilience of infrastructure networks with respect to both direct and interdependent risks of extreme events. These findings are also verified by the results of two case studies.Practical implicationsAs the two case studies have shown, the proposed methodological framework can be applied to the resource allocation process in asset management practices.Social implicationsThe proposed methodology improves the resilience of the infrastructure network, which can alleviate the social and economic impact of extreme events on communities.Originality/valueCapitalizing on the combination of agent-based modeling and simulation-based optimization techniques, this study fulfills a critical gap in infrastructure asset management by incorporating infrastructure interdependence and resilience concepts into the resource allocation process.

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