Prioritization of pavement stretches using fuzzy MCDM approach - A case study

Effective pavement management requires the prioritization of the road stretches for logical disbursement of the funds available towards maintenance of the pavement. Several methods have been developed and implemented towards this goal. However, the uncertainty involved with some of the parameters has not been addressed adequately in most of the works. One such parameter has been identified as the severity of distress which is difficult to assess accurately. Hence a Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making (FMCDM) approach has been proposed in this paper. For demonstration of the approach, pavement distresses with respect to their extent and severity have been collected over a number of stretches. In addition, an expert opinion survey has been carried out to quantify the influence of these parameters on the functional condition of the pavement. Priority Index (PI) has been worked out, based on which the ranking of the stretches has been arrived at.