Risk assessment for highway projects using jackknife technique

Risk assessment in highway projects has been investigated extensively; however, it is still comparatively neglected for this process with a non-parametric jackknife technique. Highway projects' data and experts' remarks in developing countries are small and limited; moreover, statistical distributions of parameters which play significant role in the projects are usually unknown. Therefore, common approaches cannot assist such kind of problems remarkably. To mitigate the foregoing issues in highway projects, the non-parametric jackknife resampling technique is applied in this paper. Risks are first ranked with a common technique, and then those risks will be ranked with the jackknife technique. The final rankings are conducive to some rewarding results, such as reduction of standard deviation and normality of data. Furthermore, the common risk ranking and jackknife risk ranking are compared in detail and illustrated with the risk data from a highway project, and also compared with the normal probability plot. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.