Determination of repair and work zone policies for road sections by optimizing a simplified rule

Abstract

To determine pavement sections to repair and locations of work zones on a road system consisting of multiple adjacent sections, we need to consider the benefits of simultaneous repairs on neighboring sections within a single work zone. Also, it is desirable to consider the pavement deterioration process in view of long-term pavement management systems. In this study, instead of the globally optimized method with huge computational cost, a realistic and computationally feasible methodology is proposed to determine desirable repair and work zone policies. The proposed methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a small scale road pavement system. As a result, it is found that the proposed method can derive the almost same solution as the optimal policy in terms of the life cycle cost with much shorter computational time than methodology to find the exact solution.