2014 - Spain - Optimizing Project Level Investments

Abstract.Pavement maintenance is one of the major issues of public agencies. Insufficient investment or inefficient maintenance strategies lead to high economic expenses in the long-term.Under budgetary restrictions,the optimal allocation of resources becomes a crucial aspect.Two traditional approaches (sequential and holistic) and four classes of optimization methods (selection based on ranking, mathematical optimization, near-optimization and other methods) have been applied to solve this problem. They vary on the number of alternatives considered and how the selection process is performed. Therefore, a previous understanding of the problem is mandatory to identify the most suitable approach and method for a particular network. This study aims to assist highway agencies, researchers and practitioners on when and how to apply available methods based on a comparative analysis of the current state of the practice.Holistic approach tackles the problem considering the overall network condition; while the sequential approach is easier to implement and understand, but may lead to solutions far from optimal. Scenarios defining the suitability of these approaches are defined. Finally, an iterative approach gathering the advantages of traditional approaches is proposed an applied in a case study. The proposed approach considers the overall network condition in a simpler and more intuitively manner than with a holistic approach.