A. Ferreira (Portugal)
Asset management, infrastructures, modelling, life-cycle cost analysis, optimization and genetic algorithms
This paper presents a Life-Cycle Cost Analysis System (LCCAS) for Transportation Asset Management Systems. The objective of the LCCAS is to minimize total expected discounted costs over the planning time-span while keeping the transportation infrastructure within given quality standards (another objective that may be considered, is to maximize service quality). To run the LCCAS the infrastructure manager must define and load all the components of the system: the objective of the analysis; the data and the models about the infrastructure components; and the constraints that the system must guarantee. The results of the application of the system to a set of infrastructures are the maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) plan, the costs report and the predictable structural and functional quality of the infrastructures. The system is solved by a program called LifeCCAS, a heuristic based on genetic-algorithm principles. In the case study presented in this paper, the application to pavements of the road network of Coimbra, in Portugal, the system uses the deterministic pavement performance model used in the AASHTO flexible pavement design method. The proposed LCCAS uses decision variables that maintain the identity of pavement sections in the network and lead to maintenance and rehabilitation policies that are easy related to these sections. In this way, the translation of network-level policies into project-level decisions is very easy to make. In addition, the model makes it easy to include both agency cost and user cost in the objective function. Another advantage is the capability to incorporate traffic growth rates and section priority ratings. The final part of the paper contains presents the developments planned for the near future.
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