Preflood Road Maintenance Strategy for a Road Authority

Abstract

This paper has derived a preflood road maintenance strategy. It provides an innovative approach by upgrading pavement strength now (Year 1 of the analysis) with a thin overlay, and then evaluating pavement lifecycle performance if a flood comes in different years. An after-flood treatment strategy would also be a part of this strategy package. The study has considered normal deterioration after a treatment given in Year 1 and uses the new roughness and rutting based road deterioration (RD) models to predict after-flood deterioration before providing postflood treatments. The study has used highway development and management (HDM-4) model for obtaining after-flood treatments. The results show pavement performance, necessary treatments at Year 1 and any year, required budget, and economic results. For a case study in Queensland, Australia, the treatment cost in Year 1 was about $21.13 billion, and the total preflood strategy cost is $37 billion to $38 billion. A thin overlay is adequate for after-flood rehabilitation. This preflood strategy is compared with a recently derived postflood strategy, and it appears that a preflood strategy can maintain the network better and demonstrate positive economic benefits.