Using social and economic factors for ranking pavement maintenance and rehabilitation projects

Abstract

Current pavement maintenance and rehabilitation project prioritization in Sri Lanka considers only economic factors while neglecting social, political, and environmental factors. In this study, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), which can be used as a multicriteria decision-making tool, was utilized for the evaluation of three different pavement maintenance and rehabilitation projects in Sri Lanka. Social and economic factors that affected the three projects were considered and the inner and outer dependencies among them were evaluated and weighted. Pairwise comparisons were conducted complemented by interviews of transportation experts from the Road Development Authority (RDA) of Sri Lanka. Given that the RDA’s current method only considers economic factors, our results highlighted differences between the two methods. Therefore, ANP could be recommended for prioritizing pavement maintenance and rehabilitation projects in Sri Lanka.