Mathematical Programming Models for the Development of a Unified Ranking System

An important component of any rehabilitation and maintenance programming is an index or scale for selecting candidate projects for rehabilitation and establishing priority among the candidate projects. In the past two decades, tools and concepts of multiple attribute decision making (MADM) have been applied to developing an index for establishing priorities for pavement rehabilitation. However, virtually no effort has been made toward developing a unified ranking system for both rigid and flexible pavements. Presented is a univariate time series model dealing with a single common attribute existing in both rigid and flexible pavements, such as roughness. The single attribute method is extended by adding more attributes such as cracking, rutting, punchouts, and so forth is in order to form a MADM method. The goal programming model determines the relative weights for the multiple attributes. Several advantages of these models for practical application are discussed.