Maintenance of Road Structures

Automated Winter Road Maintenance Using Road Surface Condition Measurements

Real-time measurement of tire-road friction coefficient is extremely valuable for winter road maintenance operations and can be used to optimize the kind and quantity of the deicing and anti-icing chemicals applied to the roadway. In this project, a wheel based tire-road friction coefficient measurement system is first developed for snowplows. Unlike a traditional Norse meter, this system is ba...

Motorists’ Evaluation of Road Maintenance Management

The road network is extremely valuable. Road Administrations are expected to invest maintenance funding in a way that returns maximum benefit to road users. Cost-benefit analysis is one method to ensure that an adequate return in terms of benefits results from committing expenditure. Today, cost-benefit calculations are frequently used as a base for decision making of investments. The surges fo...

Effects of Uncertainty to Road Maintenance

Road maintenance is a complex issue with many uncertainties involved. Frequently, the analysis of good maintenance strategies is carried out in deterministic frameworks assuming that a deterministic model captures the ‘most probable’ scenario and therefore corresponds to the expected values in stochastic models. Since it is agreed upon that expected net-benefits are to be maximized, the introdu...

Markov Decision Processes for Road Maintenance Optimisation

This paper primarily focuses on finding a policy for maintaining a road segment. The paper presents two methods for finding such a policy. The first one is using a probabilistic Markov Decision Process in order to determine the optimal maintenance policy. The second method is used by the Road and Hydraulic Engineering Division (DWW). That policy however is not optimal but does not require an MD...

TM 5-626 Unsurfaced Road Maintenance Management