Development of optimum pavement maintenance strategies for a road network

Abstract

Each road authority requires set maintenance standards and strategies to manage its roads. This paper has achieved that for the Queensland road authority as an example. The 34,000 km road network has been divided in to 27 road groups using pavement type, loading and pavement strength as criteria to set standards and strategies for each of them, which helps managing different classes of roads efficiently. The HDM-4’s road deterioration and work effects models with ‘minimize agency cost and maximize performance’ optimisation algorithm are used to obtain an optimum solution from 36 alternatives for a road group. The results provided ideal standards, necessary cost-effective treatments and an optimum budget for sub groups and ultimately to the whole network. It is observed that about $17.8bn is needed to maintain the flexible and composite roads in the next 20 years at 4.0 International Roughness Index (IRI in m/km). Some key findings on pavement life cycle performances and budget are also discussed.