Prioritization of Egyptian Road Maintenance Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Maintenance procedures are often used to slow the rate of road pavement deterioration. Developing an effective pavement maintenance plan for the road network while considering the maintenance budget is considered a challenging task. This manuscript presents the development of a multi-criteria decision-making model to prioritize the regular maintenance and rehabilitation of road network pavement. An Egyptian real-life case study consisting of 20 road sections on 10 routes is analyzed to illustrate the use of the model and demonstrate its capabilities in prioritizing regular maintenance. The model computations are performed in two stages: (1) identify maintenance and rehabilitation factors for six criteria, which are pavement quality (performance), road safety, traffic level, pavement age, road class, and construction quality; and (2) utilize the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to calculate the weight of criteria that influence decision-making on pavement maintenance and rehabilitation to generate an overall index for each road and arrange it ascendingly. These capabilities of the developed model for maintenance decision-making used as a guideline in prioritizing the road network maintenance plan, while considering the annual maintenance budget. The priority of pavement maintenance was arranged and implemented by the agencies, which had a successful impact on the road maintenance system in Egypt.

Automated summary

Maintenance procedures are used to slow down road pavement deterioration, but developing an effective maintenance plan while considering the budget is a challenging task. This study presents a multi-criteria decision-making model to prioritize the regular maintenance and rehabilitation of road pavement. The model uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process method to calculate the weight of criteria and generate an overall index for each road, allowing for prioritization of maintenance based on available budget.