Management scheme of road pavements considering heterogeneous multiple life cycles changed by repeated maintenance work

Road agencies provide maintenance work to serve a satisfactory level of road services to the public. However, as time goes on, pavement structure deteriorates for many reasons. Since repeated maintenance work upon deteriorated pavement structures can accelerate the deterioration speed, the pavements require periodic reconstruction work to recover original integrity. However, in the real world, it is difficult to carry out such a high level of maintenance work due to insufficient budgets, and no evidence for a guarantee of better economic efficiency. To support decision making in asset management, this study tries to define changing pavement performance by repeated maintenance work with empirical data. As an analytical tool, mixed hazard model with hierarchical Bayesian estimation method was applied. With the results, a best maintenance scheme on reconstruction timing was suggested by life cycle cost analysis. For the empirical study, a maintenance history data on Korean national highways, accumulated from 1965, was applied. The analysis procedures and results of this paper could be a good reference to build much realistic long-term maintenance strategy and reasonable budget allocation. In addition, the mixed hazard model with the hierarchical Bayesian estimation method is expected to be a useful tool in solving problems with heterogeneous population sampling, and in finding best practice and gaps among competitive alternatives.