Calibrating a Local Civil Airport Runway Residual Life Prediction Model Using Random Effects and Joint Estimation

Existing runway residual life prediction models need to be modified using the historical data of evaluated airports during evaluation and management for civil airports in China. If the data measured in the field and the historical data used for model calibration do not represent the actual historical performance of the evaluated airport, the predicted performance of the revised model might be poor. This study used measured pavement performance data for local civil airports in Henan Province from 2007 to 2017. The joint-estimation method was used to establish a functional residual life prediction model for local civil airport pavement with another dataset. A functional residual life prediction model for airport pavement was proposed in consideration of the influence of aircraft traffic and the thickness of the pavement surface layer. Taking into account the differences between samples in the two datasets, nonlinear regression with random-effect analysis and joint estimation were used to explain unobserved heterogeneity at the sample level and heteroscedasticity in the dataset. Based on the results of the established residual life prediction model, the marginal effect of the model parameters and the prediction performance of the entire model were analyzed with the measured data from the local airport pavement. Finally, the engineering applicability of the calibrated prediction model for pavement residual life was further evaluated.