Comparison of optimization approaches for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation policies on road section and network level

The main goal in pavement management is to efficiently address various distress types with adequate maintenance and rehabilitation treatments (M&R). Common approaches treat this optimization problem with reductionism aggregating distress survey data to long homogeneous sections with condition grades within arbitrary thresholds. As the main optimization method is based on marginal cost-effectiveness (MCE), further simplification by aggregating condition grades to composite condition indices is necessary. However, using a novel life cycle costing approach it can be shown that these simplifications are no longer necessary. Furthermore, this new approach allows an optimization of treatment type, timing and work-zone length and can be used for cross asset optimization aswell. Based on a simulation study the paper provides a short over-viewand comparison of both common and novel life cycle costing approach providing proof that this new approach yields far more practical and economic results under the same conditions (ceteris paribus).