Economic risk assessment of concrete and asphaltic pavements in freeways and highways

Abstract

The greater parts of Iranian roads are of the asphaltic kind. The real reason behind making this type of road lies in the abundance of bitumen and the cheaper price of the substance in past years. The upward spiraling price of oil at the global level and the liberalization of subsidies were responsible for rocketing prices of asphalt pavement. As a result, a motivation was created to investigate an alternative method called concrete pavements. The construction cost of concrete and asphalt pavement hinges on specifications of the project, but one of the main concerns was about the likelihood of fluctuations in spending during the construction phase. According to the importance of price changes, this paper intends to find which type of concrete and asphalt pavements have lower price changes in Iran. To answer this question, the Monte Carlo simulation is applied. Since the Monte Carlo simulation needs a prediction model and the data used for developing the model hinges on historical data, the authors applied regression and time series methods. The results show that firstly, the regression method has better performance than the time series model and the second, the implementation of concrete pavement has less economic risks in Iranian freeways and highways.