Decision support for optimal scheduling of highway pavement preventive maintenance within resurfacing cycle

This paper presents a case study for optimizing decisions on the best combination of preventive maintenance (PM) treatments and timings to be applied in the resurfacing life-cycle (interval between resurfacing events), for a given highway pavement section. In the optimization procedure, the paper incorporates key infrastructure management concepts of treatment-specific triggers, performance jump models, and performance trend models. Using a case study, the paper determines that optimization can be a viable tool to support scheduling decisions for highway preventive maintenance. Also, using sensitivity analysis, it is determined that changes in the resurfacing interval length and discount rate can influence the choice of optimal PM schedule.