Cost-benefit analysis of road maintenance and standard improvement strategies for the road network

We have programmed an algorithm to find optimal rehabilitation strategies for a set of similar objects (road pavements, in our case) that will have to share common annual maintenance budgets. The objects may differ with respect to initial states, rates of degradation, and cost functions, and a range of rehabilitation measures of varying intensity may be available. This problem is inherently complex, and to our knowledge, none of the currently used maintenance planning systems solve it correctly. Based on this program, cost benefit analysis of increasing the annual budgets may be performed. It would also be possible to find optimal ways of reducing a maintenance backlog or to perform cost benefit analysis of improving the road standard. The report also provides principles and explicit formulas for optimal maintenance, the size of the maintenance backlog, and the value of improved road standards under more specialised, stylised assumptions.