Pavement Resurfacing Planning for Highway Networks: Parametric Policy Iteration Approach

Abstract

This paper presents a modeling framework for planning pavement resurfacing activities on highway networks in the case of continuous pavement state, discrete time, and infinite horizon. Optimal resurfacing policies that minimize discounted life-cycle costs are obtained by solving a multidimensional dynamic program, where travelers’ route choices and the agency’s resource allocation decisions are considered simultaneously. To reduce computational difficulty, policy iteration is used together with a parametric function approximation technique. Numerical examples show that the proposed approach solves the planning problem efficiently. The effect of various factors (travelers’ route choice, agency budget, etc.) on the optimal policies is also analyzed.