Incorporating network considerations into pavement management systems: A case for approximate dynamic programming

•The work combines the budget allocation and work zone scheduling problems for MDPs.•Network capacity losses due to construction activity are constrained by a threshold.•An ADP framework is proposed to model the system-level MR&R decision-making.•A parametric study is conducted to examine the impact of network considerations.•ADP performs better with network constraints than a state-of-the-art MDP framework.

The objective of infrastructure management is to provide optimal maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement (MR&R) policies for a system of facilities over a planning horizon. While most approaches in the literature have studied the decision-making process as a finite resource allocation problem, the impact of construction activities on the road network is often not accounted for. The state-of-the-art Markov decision process (MDP)-based optimization approaches in infrastructure management, while optimal for solving budget allocation problems, become internally inconsistent upon introducing network constraints. In comparison, approximate dynamic programming (ADP) enables solving complex problem formulations by using simulation techniques and lower dimension value function approximations. In this paper, an ADP framework is proposed, wherein capacity losses due to construction activities are subjected to an agency-defined network capacity threshold. A parametric study is conducted on a stylized network configuration to infer the impact of network-based constraints on the decision-making process.