Application of a new binary harmony search algorithm in highway rehabilitation decision-making problems: a case study in Iran

Abstract

Due to the importance of optimisation in highway rehabilitation projects and the shortcomings of mathematical programming in performing such a task at a quite reasonable runtime span, a new binary harmony search (BHS) is devised to accomplish the decision-making process of highway rehabilitation problems. A new formulation and a BHS are developed and applied to a case study problem consisting of 96 highway segments needing rehabilitation, a number of which should be selected to be rehabilitated at a fixed budget in order to maximise the total quality of the highway network with the minimum possible cost. The BHS provides the value 1 for the segments which must be reconstructed and 0 for the remaining. Pavement Condition Index is employed to assess the quality of the highway. Several sensitivity analyses were performed to examine the influence of different parameters on the output.