A Cost-Benefit Optimization Model For Maintenance and Rehabilitation Activities of Roads

Abstract

The maintenance and rehabilitation of existing, mature road facilities are becoming gradually more significant and important components of highway activity. An efficient maintenance and rehabilitation policy is essential for a safe, comfortable and cost-effective transportation system. But, decisions to maintain existing road facilities involve a number of possible options in activities ranging from routine maintenance to rehabilitation or reconstruction, in choices for allocation of resources throughout a highway network, and to decide between investments versus non-investment option. Moreover, any economic analysis should not only consider the cost factor but also be designed to give maximum coverage of benefits like changes in road maintenance costs, changes in accident rates, increased travel or demand etc. which makes development of a maintenance and rehabilitation policy for roads difficult. In the present study it was aimed to formulate a multi-objective optimization model considering all necessary as well as sufficient factors responsible in ‘maintenance and rehabilitation activities’ of highway facilities so as to minimize the total cost and increase the total return in terms of benefits from improved road condition subject to the practical limitations faced by concerned agency and user due to deterioration in road condition. A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) based C programming was studied and used to validate the developed model. Lastly, the proposed optimization model is compared with real-time field data collected from National Highway Division, Dhenkanal, Odisha so as to ensure its functionality and usability.