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Optimisation of maintenance strategy for rural road network using genetic

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DOI: 10.1080/10298436.2013.806807

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Optimisation of maintenance strategy for rural road

network using genetic algorithm
a b
Binu Sara Mathew & Kuncheria P. Isaac
a
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering Trivandrum, Trivandrum, Kerala,
India
b
All India Council for Technical Education, New Delhi, India
Published online: 14 Jun 2013.

To cite this article: Binu Sara Mathew & Kuncheria P. Isaac (2014) Optimisation of maintenance strategy for
rural road network using genetic algorithm, International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 15:4, 352-360, DOI:
10.1080/10298436.2013.806807

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 International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 2014
Vol. 15, No. 4, 352–360, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10298436.2013.806807

Optimisation of maintenance strategy for rural road network using genetic algorithm
Binu Sara Mathewa* and Kuncheria P. Isaacb1
a
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering Trivandrum, Trivandrum, Kerala, India; bAll India Council
for Technical Education, New Delhi, India
(Received 29 January 2013; final version received 14 May 2013)

The objective of this paper is to develop an optimised maintenance strategy for the rural road network of Kerala state. This is
accomplished with the development of a bi-objective deterministic optimisation model which simultaneously satisfies the
objectives of both minimisation of total maintenance cost and maximisation of performance of the road network. The model
is capable of planning the maintenance activities over a multi-year planning period. The performance of the road network is
accounted using the composite index, namely Pavement Condition Index. The constraint-based genetic algorithm was used
as the optimisation tool since it very well takes care of the combinatorial nature of the network-level pavement maintenance
programming. The applicability of the model is illustrated using a case study for the rural road network of Kerala state in
India. The effort made through this research work to develop a suitable Pavement Maintenance and Management System for
rural road network can lead to the proper maintenance and upkeep of the rural roads, thereby triggering a positive impact on
Downloaded by [Binu Sara Mathew] at 02:28 11 June 2014

the Indian economy.

Keywords: pavement management system; rural road network; optimisation model; genetic algorithms; Pavement
Condition Index; pavement performance

1. Introduction due to the paucity of resources. These roads have to be

An efficient transport system is an essential prerequisite for
the overall economic development of a country. Consider-
able resources are devoted to the road construction and
maintenance, and hence the resultant road network has an
asset value that represents a significant proportion of
national wealth. India’s road network, which is 3.3 million
km long, is the second largest road network in the world.
Eighty-one per cent of the total network, i.e. 2.7 million km
comprises low volume roads (other district roads and
village roads). The Government of India had launched a
major programme known as Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak
Yojana in December 2000, to ensure a complete rural
connectivity by providing ‘all – weather’ roads to rural
areas under which the rural roads are properly designed and
maintained.
Road maintenance, which is a routine work performed
for the proper upkeep of road infrastructure, is essential to
ensure its continuous utilisation in an optimum manner
during its design life. The current replacement cost of
existing rural road network according to the Rural Road
Development Plan: VISION 2025 (2007) is estimated to be
as Rs. 200,000 millions. The loss in the value of road assets
due to non-maintenance would be as high as Rs. 100,000
million per year which is equivalent to 50,000 km of roads
being eroded every year (Report on Working Group on
Rural Roads in the 11th Five Year Plan 2006). The need for
an effective and efficient management system of the rural
road network has become a real challenge to the authorities
managed within the available limited resources, in an
optimal manner, by making use of a Pavement Maintenance
and Management System (PMMS).
Extensive research work has been carried out in the area
of development of optimised maintenance decision support
system for road networks using various techniques. Wang
and Fengxin (1997) developed a Network Optimization
System model with the objective of maximising pavement
performance using fuzzy systems. Ferriera et al. (2002a)
developed a segment-linked optimisation model, GENE-
TIPAV-D using genetic algorithm in a deterministic pavement
management system to arrive at the least discounted cost
maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) strategy for various
segments in a road network. Ferriera et al. (2002b) also
developed a probabilistic segment-linked optimisation model
together with a genetic algorithm heuristic with the objective
of minimising the total discounted cost of M&R actions.
Abaza (2005) proposed an optimum stochastic model for
pavement management which deploys a non-homogeneous
discrete Markov chain for predicting the future pavement
conditions for a given pavement system. Kuhn (2010) used
approximate dynamic programming to manage a large
network of related sections of pavement, each one of which
may be plagued by a number of different distresses. Jorge and
Ferriera (2011) developed a new Maintenance Optimization
System, called GENEPAV-HDM4, which was developed to
integrate the Pavement Management System of the
Municipality of Viseu (Portugal). De La Garza et al. (2011)

*Corresponding author. Email: binuraju.1990@gmail.com

q 2013 Taylor & Francis
 International Journal of Pavement Engineering 353

developed a simpler, yet useful network-level pavement 2.1 Maximisation of pavement performance
maintenance optimisation model, which is a Linear Pavement Condition Index (PCI) was used as the
Programme subject to budget constraints and the agencies’ parameter to measure the performance of the road network
pavement performance goals in terms of total lane-miles in and the objective function was formulated as follows:
each pavement condition state. All the studies discussed
above were carried out for major roads, and an optimal X
T
maintenance strategy addressing the constraints and Maximise : Z 1 ¼ PCIst : ð1Þ
limitations prevailing on rural roads has yet not been t¼1

developed.
Subject to
Major requirement of a PMMS is to develop a multi-
year pavement maintenance programme for the entire road X
K X
S
network so as to maintain desirable performance within the X kst C kt # Bt ; ;t ¼ 1 to T; ð2Þ
available budget. The most suitable PMMS can be k¼1 s¼1
developed considering various combinations of mainten-
PCIst $ PCImin ; ;s ¼ 1 to S; ;t ¼ 1 to T; ð3Þ
ance treatments for each road stretch in the network for each
year of the analysis period, and hence an optimisation is PCIst # 100; ð4Þ
required to be exercised. Development of an optimisation
model satisfying the constraints associated with and X kst f0; 1};
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fulfilling the requirements of a rural road network is thus ð5Þ

essential for the proper maintenance management of these
roads. Minimisation of maintenance cost and maximisation
of pavement performance are equally important objectives
to be achieved for a road network. Hence, a multi-objective
model which simultaneously satisfies more than one
objective will be more effective than a single objective
optimisation model which can take care of only one
objective. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is an optimisation tool,
used by many researchers for pavement maintenance
programming, which is based on the mechanism of natural
selection. GA is customised to accommodate multi-
objective problems using specialised fitness functions.
GAs search from a number of points at a time in contrast to
the single-point approach of traditional optimisation
methods. GA uses probabilistic transition rules to guide
the search towards the optimum region of the search space
and can process a large number of maintenance strategies at
the same time (Chan et al. 1994, Liu et al. 1997, Yin 2000,
Herabat and Tangphaisankun 2005). GA has thus proved to
be an efficient tool in the pavement maintenance strategy
optimisation. Hence, the main objective of this study is to
develop a deterministic optimisation model with the
objectives of maximising the performance of the road
network and minimising the maintenance cost using GA as
the optimisation tool.
2. Formulation of optimisation model
The formulation of the optimisation model is carried
out in such a way that a cost-effective maintenance
strategy is arrived by preserving the performance
level of the road network at a desirable level. The
objective functions, namely maximisation of pavement
performance and minimisation of maintenance cost, are
described in subsequent article.
;s ¼ 1 to S; t ¼ 1 to T; k ¼ 1 to K;
where
PCIst ¼ PCIsðt21Þ þ X kst £ DPCIk ; ð6Þ
PCIst ¼ MeanðPCIst Þ 2 s; ;s ¼ 1 to S; ð7Þ
where PCIst and PCIs(t – 1) are the PCI values of road stretch
s in the network at tth and (t – 1)th year, respectively. Xkst is
a decision variable, which is ‘0’ when no action applied
and ‘1’ when an action k is applied on road section s at
time t. Ckt is the cost of carrying out the maintenance
action k in the year t. Bt is the budget allocated for the
tth year. DPCIk is an improvement in the PCI due to an
action k.
A study has been conducted by the same authors to
develop a pavement performance prediction model to
predict the PCI value of the rural roads of Kerala state
(Binu and Isaac 2011) and the same model as shown below
has been used for this study.
PCIt ¼ PCI0 2 3:682 £ ðPage Þ1:822 þ eð0:55£Page £CQÞ ; ð8Þ
where PCIt is the PCI of pavement at the end of a time
interval t. PCI0 is an initial PCI of pavement at the
beginning of time interval t. Page is the age of pavement at
the end of time interval time t. CQ is the construction
quality (quantified as a value between 0 and 1 for the rural
roads (Binu et al. 2010)).
The objective function of maximisation of perform-
ance of the road network as shown in Equation (1) was
defined by the summation of the mean PCI of all pavement
sections minus the standard deviation of the PCI values
in each year, over the analysis period as shown in Equation
(7). Major constraints for the optimisation model are given
in Equations (2) and (3). Equation (2) ensures that annual
 354 B.S. Mathew and K.P. Isaac
maintenance expenditure does not exceed the available
budget allocated for each year. The maintenance actions
should be carried out in such a way that the PCI of the road
sections is above a minimum acceptable level as explained
in Equation (3). Maintenance treatments should also be
carried out in such a way that the PCI value of the road
stretches does not exceed the maximum value of 100 as
explained by Equation (4). Equation (5) defines the
decision variable Xkst to be an integer of value either 0 or 1,
i.e. if a maintenance action k is carried out on a road stretch
s in the year t, then Xkst is 1 and otherwise 0. As different
maintenance activities are implemented, the condition of
pavement is affected in varying manner resulting in
varying levels of improvement of PCI value. The effect of
each maintenance action can be accounted in the
performance of the pavement as given in Equation (6).
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2.2 Minimisation of maintenance cost
There is often a stringent limit on the availability of budget
for the maintenance of rural road network, and hence
minimisation of present worth of maintenance coast is an
equally important objective as that of maximisation of
pavement performance. Future maintenance cost was
discounted to the present value using the conversion factor
(1 þ r) – t. The objective function for the minimisation of
maintenance cost was formulated as follows:
K X
X S X
T
1
Minimise : Z 2 ¼ X kst C kt :
k¼1 s¼1 t¼1
ð1 þ rÞt
Subject to the same constraints as given by Equations (2) –
(5), where r is discount rate and t represents a specific year
in the analysis period.
In order to combine the two objectives, which are
contrasting in nature, i.e. maximisation and minimisation,
the minimisation problem was converted into a maximisa-
tion problem using the following transformation:
1 adopted for this study. Various steps involved in solving
Z~ 2 ¼ : ð10Þ
1 þ Z2
Thus, the second objective of minimisation of mainten-
ance cost takes the form as follows:
K X
X S X
T
1 First step of applying GA to any problem is the proper
Maximise : Z~ 2 ¼ X kst Ckt :
k¼1 s¼1 t¼1
ð1 þ rÞt
Since both objectives were in non-comparable scales, i.e.
performance maximisation in terms of PCI value which
varies between 0 and 100, and the cost minimisation in
terms of currency used, normalisation was required to
combine both functions into a single objective function.
Further, there can be chances of domination of one over
the other, if normalisation is not carried out (Fwa et al.
2000). The objective functions for the present problem
were hence normalised between 0 and 1 as shown below:
Z i 2 Z imin
Z *i ¼ ; ð12Þ
Z imax 2 Z imin
where Z *i , Z imin , Z imax are the normalised objective
function and the minimum and maximum possible values
of the objective Zi.
The classical approach to solve a multi-objective
optimisation problem is to assign a weightage ‘wi’ to each
normalised objective function ‘Zi’, so that the problem is
converted into a single objective problem (Konak et al.
2006). In this study, due weightages, ‘w1’ and ‘w2’ were
given to each objective function based on the priority
assigned to them and combined to form a single objective
function. Since the individual objective function value was
normalised between 0 and 1, the maximum possible value
of each of the objective function is 1. Similarly, each of the
weightages was also assigned a value ranging from 0 to 1
such that the value of the sum of the two weightages is one.
Consequently, the combined objective function had a
maximum value of one. The combined objective function
was formulated as below:
Maximise : w1 Z *1 þ w2 Z *2 : ð13Þ
Subject to: the constraints given in Equations (2) – (5),
where w1 and w2 are the weightages given to the objective
ð9Þ functions of maximisation of pavement performance (Z1)
and minimisation of maintenance cost (Z~ 2 ), respectively.
The algorithm for the optimisation problem was coded
using Net Beans 6.9.1 IDE in Java environment.
2.3 Steps in GA
GA is an optimisation tool which can very well handle the
combinatorial nature of network-level pavement mainten-
ance programming (Fwa et al. 1994, 1996) and hence
the optimisation problem using GA are explained in the
subsequent articles.
2.3.1 Coding of decision variables
ð11Þ
representation of chromosomes. Solution coding defines
the way in which the attributes of a solution are
represented. For the present pavement maintenance
programming problem, each chromosome represents a
maintenance activity for a particular road section for a
particular year. Integer coding (0, 1, 2, 3, . . . , j) was
adopted to represent the genes (representing a mainten-
ance activity) so as to reduce the length of the strings. For
each road stretch, there are T genes, representing
 International Journal of Pavement Engineering
Figure 1. Coding of solution for the optimisation model.
maintenance actions for T years for that road stretch.
Thus, the solution string consists of (S £ T) number of
chromosomes, where S is the total number of road
stretches and T is the analysis period. Coding of the
solution is schematically represented in Figure 1.
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2.3.2 Constraint handling
Constraints of an optimisation problem which is being
solved by GA should be handled carefully so as to ensure
feasibility of solutions. In the present optimisation
problem, those solutions which did not satisfy the
constraints, especially the budget and pavement perform-
ance constraints (Equations (2) – (5)), were handled by the
‘penalty and repair’ methods. The penalty method
converts a constrained problem into an unconstrained
problem by penalising the objective function (Goldberg
1989). The repair method initially tries to repair the
infeasibility of a solution several times until the solution
becomes a feasible one or till the repair becomes
impossible. In this study, the budget and pavement
performance constraints were checked simultaneously for
all individual genes for an infeasible solution and the
position of genes which made the solution infeasible was
identified and repaired. The feasibility of the repaired
solution was again checked and if not satisfied, the repair
process was repeated for a specified number of times till it
became feasible. After the specified number of trials, if the
solution still remained infeasible, then the fitness of the
solution was penalised by a quantity proportional to the
degree of constraint violation so as to make its rank low
and consequently a less feasible solution.
2.3.3 Fitness function
Fitness in biological sense is a measure of the reproductive
efficiency of chromosomes. Solutions with higher fitness
values will have higher probability of being selected to
successive generations. For maximisation problems, the
fitness function can be considered to be the same as the
objective function and the fitness value is the value of the
objective function.
355
2.3.4 GA operators
GA uses mainly three basic operators to generate new
solutions from existing ones, namely (a) reproduction, (b)
crossover and (c) mutation.
The proportionate reproduction operator was used in
this study, where a solution string was selected for the
mating pool with a probability proportional to its fitness. In
crossover operation, generally two chromosomes, called
parents, are combined together to form a new chromo-
some, called ‘offspring’. In order to preserve some of the
good strings that are already present in the mating pool, all
strings in the mating pool are not used in the crossover
process. When a crossover probability, defined here as ‘Pc’
is used, only (100 £ Pc)% strings in the population are
used in the crossover operation and 100 (1 – Pc)% of the
population remains as they are in the current population. A
one-site crossover was adopted for this study by randomly
choosing a crossover site along the strings and by
exchanging all bits on the right side of the site between
parents. The mutation operator introduces random changes
into the characteristics of chromosomes. Mutation is
generally applied at the bit (gene) level. The mutation rate
‘Pm’ which decides the number of bits to be muted (i.e.
probability of changing the properties of a gene) is
generally very small. To exercise mutation, a random
number between 0 and 1 generated and if it is less than the
mutation probability, then the bit is randomly changed.
Application of these three operators on the current
population creates a new population and this complete
cycle is called a ‘generation’. This new population was
used to generate subsequent populations and finally
yielding solutions that are close to the optimum solution.
The process was repeated till convergence was achieved
and the best solution of the last generation was stored as
the optimal solution. The procedure of the optimisation
problem using GA is shown in Figure 2.
2.4 Studies on variation of PCI due to a maintenance
action
When a maintenance action is carried out, the PCI of the
road will change. It is not necessary that the PCI will
 356 B.S. Mathew and K.P. Isaac

treatment should be available to model the actual

deterioration behaviour thereafter.

2.4.1 Increment in PCI of pavements due to various

maintenance actions
It was decided to conduct a survey among experts to collect
the required information regarding the variation in PCI of
pavements due to various maintenance actions by ‘Delphi
technique’. In this approach, opinion was sought from
experts to arrive at the effect of various maintenance actions
on PCI for roads in different conditions. Since the effect of a
maintenance activity is varying for pavements in different
conditions, first an effort was made to classify the
pavements in different condition states based on their PCI
values. A questionnaire was prepared requesting the experts
to classify the pavements into different condition states,
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such as excellent, very good, etc. based on the PCI value and
to quantify the effect of four maintenance actions
considered in the study on the pavements in different
condition states. The effect of maintenance action was
quantified in terms of improvements in PCI of pavements in
different condition states. Average value of the improve-
ments in PCI based on the expert opinion was worked out
and is shown in Table 1.
Minimum targeted performance level of the road
network was defined by selecting a minimum PCI value
Figure 2. Sequence of operations for the optimisation model below which PCI of any of the road stretches was not
using GA. supposed to fall.

improve to the maximum value of 100, and it is observed

that the improvement in PCI will depend on the PCI of the
pavement before maintenance. The variation in PCI of a
rural road due to a particular maintenance action has not
been studied so far in India. Deterioration mechanism of
pavements after a maintenance treatment differs from that
of new pavements. The data regarding the deterioration
of the pavements after carrying out each maintenance
2.4.2 Effect of maintenance treatment on the pavement
performance
An approximate procedure was adopted to model the post
treatment deterioration of pavements. Improved PCI of the
roads after each maintenance treatment was worked out by
adding the increments in PCI for each maintenance
treatment as suggested in Table 1 to the present PCI. The

Table 1. Effect of maintenance action on the condition of pavement in terms of PCI based on expert opinion

Improvements in PCI due to various maintenance actions

Resurfacing
Shoulder maintenance Pothole patching Patching and slurry seal (pre-mix carpet)
Present pavement condition (K1) (K2) (K3) (K4)
Very good PCI .80 NA NA NA NA
Good PCI 70– 80 2 5 10 15
PCI 60– 70 2 5 10 25
Fair PCI 50– 60 2 10 25 35
PCI 40– 50 2 10 25 45
Poor PCI 30– 40 2 15 35 50
PCI 20– 30 2 15 35 60
Very poor PCI 10– 20 2 20 45 70
PCI ,10 2 20 45 80
 International Journal of Pavement Engineering 357

Table 2. Details of road stretches selected for the case study.

PCI of the road

Road Age as on Construction stretches in the
stretch ID 2009 (years) quality (CQ) year 2009
1 6.2 0.625 7.00
2 6.0 0.750 15.5
3 5.8 0.750 19.6
4 5.5 0.750 27.4
5 6.0 0.625 11.5
6 5.0 0.625 36.5
7 5.8 0.750 19.6
8 5.8 0.563 14.6
9 5.8 0.563 14.6
Figure 3. Effect of maintenance treatment on the performance 10 4.9 0.750 40.5
of pavement in terms of PCI. 11 5.2 0.625 32.9
12 5.0 0.625 36.5
13 5.8 0.750 19.6
effect of a maintenance action was accounted in terms of 14 6.0 0.563 10.0
15 6.0 0.625 11.5
decrease in the age of pavement. The procedure adopted for
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accounting the effect of maintenance treatment on the

further performance of the pavement is illustrated in Figure
3. As seen from Figure 3, the PCI of a road section at an age
of 5 years is 39.0 and if a treatment of slurry seal is carried
out at this stage, its PCI increases by 35.0 and reaches a
value of 74.0. The effect of the maintenance treatment on
the road section is accounted as the reduction in the age of
pavement and the new age is taken as the age corresponding
to a PCI of 74, which is 3.2 years. Further deterioration of
the road section was calculated using this new age as the
basis. If there was no treatment carried out in any year, then
the age at that time was simply incremented and the
deterioration was estimated as before till any treatment was
carried out for that stretch of the road. The age of the road
corresponding to the new PCI after each maintenance
treatment was back calculated in the algorithm using the
same deterioration equation in terms of PCI (Equation (8))
by trial and error process. Thus, whenever some treatment
was carried out for a road, its age thereafter has to be reset to
an age corresponding to the improved PCI and the further
deterioration was to be accounted from that age.
3. Case study
The feasibility of the proposed model was established by
conducting a case study for the rural road network which
was used for the development of PCI prediction model for
a 10-year analysis period (Binu 2012). The road network
consisted of 15 road stretches, each of length 0.5 km with
an average age of 5.7 years and construction quality (CQ)
of selected road stretches varies from 0.5625 to 0.75. The
pavement condition data in the year 2009 were used to
calculate the PCI values of the road stretches in the
beginning of the analysis period. Age and PCI values of
the road stretches as on the year 2009 and the CQ are
tabulated in Table 2. Maintenance treatments considered
in this programme and their cost/lane/km as per Schedule
of Rates (2008) of Kerala State PWD are shown in Table 3.
The major distresses noticed in the study stretches were
only functional and hence the maintenance treatments
considered do not include pavement strengthening
treatments. The discount rate for the present optimisation
model was assumed as 4% (Priya 2008).
3.1 GA parameters selected for the case study
The number of solutions in each generation (population
size) should be carefully chosen and hence a parametric
study was carried out on a sample road network to select
the GA parameters and the minimum population size
which yielded the best result was found to be 800 and
hence the population size was fixed as 800. The crossover
probability was fixed as 0.85 and mutation probability was
selected as 0.005. Both the budget and performance
constraints were handled using ‘penalty and repair’
method. Total number of repairs was limited to 100 and
if the solution could not be repaired at this stage, the
objective function was penalised heavily so that its fitness
reduced drastically. Stopping criterion defines the
condition of termination of search and was set as the
moment when there is no further improvement in the best
Table 3. Maintenance treatments selected for the study.
Code Cost (Rs in
Maintenance treatment assigned lakhs/lane/km)
Do nothing K0 0.000
Shoulder maintenance K1 0.250
Pothole patching K2 0.500
Patching and slurry seal K3 2.438
Resurfacing with pre-mix K4 4.310
carpet (20 mm)
 358 B.S. Mathew and K.P. Isaac

Table 4. A typical optimised maintenance programme for the rural road network selected for the case study (minimum PCI: 40, ratio of
priority: 0.5/0.5).
Road
stretch Optimised maintenance actions for the road stretches
Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
2010 4 4 4 2 4 2 4 4 4 0 2 2 4 4 4
2011 1 1 0 4 1 2 2 2 2 4 4 4 2 1 1
2012 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2
2013 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 3 3
2014 2 2 3 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 2
2015 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 3 3
2016 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 2
2017 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 3 3
2018 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2
2019 3 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 3

Note: where 0 – do nothing; 1 – shoulder maintenance; 2 – pothole patching; 3 – patching and lurry seal; 4 – resurfacing with pre-mix carpet.

solution value for the last 10% of the total number of performance and minimisation of maintenance cost is
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generations. shown in Table 4. The total maintenance cost was set not
to exceed Rs. 25 lakhs for any year of the analysis period.
An effort was made to observe the distribution of the
3.2 Experimentation of the optimisation model
maintenance cost requirement over the analysis period for
Main input parameters of the optimisation model developed the maintenance programme shown in Table 4 and is shown
include the age and CQ of the roads in the network, the ratio in Figure 4. The road network selected for the case study
of priority assigned to the two objectives of maximisation consisted of roads with age ranging from 4.92 to 6.17 years
of performance and minimisation of maintenance cost, the without any maintenance action being carried out till the start
minimum expected performance level of the network in of the analysis period. Consequently, the maintenance cost
terms of PCI value, maximum budget level allocated and requirement for the first year of analysis period is as high as
the discount rate selected for the estimation of the present 25% of the total maintenance cost and the maintenance cost
worth of maintenance cost. The model was run using the required over the rest of the years is more or less constant.
initial input parameters, namely age and CQ of the road
stretches of the rural road network used for the study in
the development of deterioration models. Condition of 3.2.2 Effect of priority assigned to objectives on the
the roads at the end of year 2009 was used as input to the maintenance decisions
optimisation model and the PCI of the roads was then
The maintenance decision will depend on the priority
calculated using Equation (8). Analysis period for the
assigned between the two objectives, namely performance
maintenance programme was chosen as 10 years, i.e. from
and maintenance cost. When performance is assigned
the year 2010 to 2019. The budget allocated, the minimum
higher priority and maintenance cost assigned a lesser
required performance level of the road network and the
priority selected for the maximisation of pavement
performance and minimisation of maintenance cost were
then specified. The initial population for the problem was
generated by random process and the sequence of
operations using genetic algorithm as shown in Figure 3
was then performed. The optimised maintenance pro-
gramme was selected as the best solution in the final pool of
solutions when the stopping criterion was satisfied.

3.2.1 A typical maintenance programme for the rural

road network
A typical maintenance programme obtained for the road
network keeping the minimum expected performance
level of the road network at a PCI value of 40 and Figure 4. Distribution of maintenance cost requirement over
assigning equal priority for both maximisation of analysis period.
 International Journal of Pavement Engineering
Figure 5. Variation of total maintenance cost with varying
priority of pavement performance and maintenance cost.
priority, the maintenance cost will be high and the road
network will have a better PCI value. Therefore, a trade-
off between the two priorities is essential whereby the
Downloaded by [Binu Sara Mathew] at 02:28 11 June 2014
pavement can be maintained at a reasonable level with
minimum cost. Hence, the ratio of priority of the two
objectives was varied to find out the resultant maintenance
cost and average PCI of the road network. The results of
the analysis are shown in Figures 5 and 6, respectively. It
can be observed from Figures 5 and 6 that the average PCI
of the road network for an equal priority (0.5:0.5) for both
objectives is as high as 65, which is a reasonable
performance level for a road network and the total
maintenance cost amounts to Rs. 88.25 lakhs. When
priority assigned to performance is 0.7 and 1.0, the PCI
value increases to 70 and 75, respectively, and the total
maintenance cost increases to Rs. 100 – 120 lakhs,
respectively. A further analysis of the results of
maintenance cost and PCI value in terms of the percentage
increase was carried out and is shown in Table 5. From
Table 5, it can be observed that the percentage
improvement in average PCI for a priority level of
0.5/0.5 over a priority level of 0/1 is 16.3, which is
achieved with an increase in the maintenance cost of 6.6%,
but when the priority of performance was given a high
weightage of 70% and the weightage to priority of the
Figure 6. Variation of the average PCI of the road network with
varying priority of pavement performance and maintenance cost.
359
Table 5. Effect of varying ratio of priority levels of pavement
performance to cost minimisation
Ratio of priority Percentage Percentage
of performance to increase in total improvement
maintenance cost maintenance cost in average PCI
0/1 – –
0.3/0.7 0.3 0.3
0.5/0.5 6.6 16.3
0.7/0.3 19.6 24.2
1/0 44.6 32.9
maintenance cost was reduced to 30%, the maintenance
cost increased to 19.6%, whereas the PCI increase was
only 24.2%. The incremental increase in the maintenance
cost was quite high, when the priority of performance was
assigned a weightage of 70% (ratio of priority: 0.7/0.3) and
100% (ratio of priority: 1/0), when compared with the case
of weightage of 30% (ratio of priority: 0.3/0.7) and 50%
(ratio of priority: 0.5/0.5).
4. Conclusions
Rural roads, which play a vital role in Indian economic
system, need immediate attention with respect to its
maintenance and management. This study is a pursuit
towards the development of a comprehensive, scientific
PMMS for rural roads. An effort was taken to develop a
deterministic optimisation model satisfying two objec-
tives, namely maximisation of pavement performance and
minimisation of maintenance cost. For optimising
maintenance programming of rural roads, the major
constraints considered were the budget and the perform-
ance level of the road network. GA was used as the
optimisation tool to take care of the combinatorial nature
of pavement maintenance programming and the algorithm
for the optimisation problem was coded using Net Beans
6.9.1 IDE in Java environment. Pavement performance in
the optimisation model was accounted in terms of the
composite index, PCI and a model was developed for the
prediction of PCI. A case study was conducted using the
developed optimisation model for a rural road network
comprising 15 road stretches in Kerala state. It was
observed from the analysis of the results of case study that:
. The deterministic bi-objective optimisation model
developed in this study can be used effectively to
arrive at an optimal maintenance programme for a
rural road network.
. A bi-objective model, with an equal priority for
minimisation of maintenance cost and maximisation
of performance, will guarantee a reasonable
performance level for the rural road network.
The flexibility in the formulation of the optimisation
model permits the incorporation of various performance
 360 B.S. Mathew and K.P. Isaac
criteria, both functional and structural, thus making its
applicability more versatile. Further experimentation of
the model has been carried out and reported in the PhD
thesis (Binu 2012).
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support
received from National Rural Roads Development Agency
(NRRDA), New Delhi, through the research project ‘Rural Roads
Pavement Performance Study’.
Note
1. Email: kpisaac@yahoo.com
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