A Nonparametric Efficiency Methodology for Comparative Assessment of Infrastructure Agency Performance

Abstract

Government legislatures require highway agencies to render account for their stewardship of the highway infrastructure by regularly assessing their highway performance outcomes against resource inputs (expenditures). This can be done by comparing the expenditures and resulting performance in each of multiple highway agencies (jurisdictions) and for a specific type of infrastructure. In addressing this research question, the paper first carries out adjustments to account for differences in attributes (inventory size, measurement bias, infrastructure age, climate severities, and traffic intensities) across the jurisdictions. The methodology develops an efficiency frontier using optimization, identifies frontier located jurisdictions (FLJs), removes the FLJs and re-develops the next frontier, and continues this cycle until all jurisdictions have been removed. The methodology is applied to interstate highway bridges in the various state agencies in the USA. The results yield an overall ranking of the agencies' efficiencies. Highway oversight agencies can use the paper's methodology to monitor the expenditure and performance stewardship of highway agencies in various jurisdictions that report to the oversight agency, and to rank the agencies in terms of their respective levels of efficiency. Also, agencies in the individual jurisdictions can use the methodology to identify which other agencies they could "learn" from, in order to move up to the efficiency frontier, and to estimate the anticipated benefits of moving up.