Pavement Network Maintenance Optimization Considering Multidimensional Condition Data

Abstract

A growing body of research seeks to optimize the selection and scheduling of maintenance, repair and rehabilitation activities for networks of sections of pavement. Such research typically relies on a composite condition index, a one-dimensional and often discrete measure of the overall structural health and/or serviceability of pavement. Pavement can suffer from a large number of related but distinct distresses. Difficulties associated with unobserved heterogeneity have hampered efforts to accurately model deterioration via composite condition indices. At the same time, optimization techniques used in pavement management have been shown both to be sensitive to deterioration model specification and to become computationally intractable as condition data increase.This research describes how approximate dynamic programming can be used to manage a large network of related sections of pavement each one of which may be plagued by a number of different distresses. Approximate dynamic programming mitigates the curse of dimensionality that has haunted distinct Markov decision problem formulations of the infrastructure management problem and limited their complexity. A computational study illustrates how the proposed approach leads to more sophisticated maintenance decision rules, which can be used to ensure the suggestions of pavement management systems more closely match engineering best practices.

Articulating the Effects of Infrastructure Resourcing on Air Force Missions: Competing Approaches to Inform the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System

“…The same phenomena are found within DoD. Pavement in poor condition reduces fuel efficiency, increases the operating costs of vehicles using the pavement, increases accident risk, and can increase delay (Kuhn, 2011).…”

“…The danger here is that aggregation leads to information loss. High-level decisions made based on composite CIs may not reflect engineering best practice at the facility level, leading to unnecessary maintenance and repair activities, decreased serviceability, or both simultaneously (Kuhn, 2011).…”

An Integrated Optimization Model for Life Cycle Pavement Maintenance Budgeting Problems

“…Cohen and Madanat [6] developed a pavement maintenance optimization model under uncertainty performance of Markov decision process (MDP) with utilizing the quasi-Bayes under DP technique framework to minimize cost expenditure and obtain timely maintenance action in a finite time horizon. Kuhn [7] further proposed an optimization model of pavement maintenance strategy that focused on the pavement physical condition and the pavement composite condition index to minimize social costs with respect to the available resources of the public agencies. Approximate dynamic programming (ADP) was applied in the model to select a proper maintenance action under a limited resource that ensures pavement serviceability at the road network level.…”

Pavement network reliability: a dual‐network based on fuzzy set methodology

“…Other researchers used reliability‐based approach to improve the performance characterization of individual pavements [6, 9, 10]. In addition, a number of studies in the literature investigated methodologies for modelling individual pavement deterioration [11–14]. However, there is only a paucity of literature on quantitative methodology to model the reliability of a large and complex pavement network.…”