A Comprehensive Framework for the Efficiency Measurement of Road Maintenance

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The road maintenance performance measurement systems developed and implemented by researchers and state DOTs mainly focus on the effectiveness measures, e.g., the level-of-service. Such measurement systems do not elaborate on the efficiency concept, e.g., the amount of resources utilized to achieve such level-of-service. Not knowing how efficient state DOTs are in being effective can lead to excessive and unrealistic maintenance budget expectations. This issue indicates the need for a performance measurement approach that can take the efficiency concept into account. The purpose of this research is to develop and implement a comprehensive framework that can measure the overall efficiency of road maintenance operations, given that multiple inputs and outputs that are incommensurate and characterize the relative performance of these operations and that they are also affected by multiple uncontrollable factors (e.g., climate, traffic, etc.). This research will study current performance measurement paradigms, and more specifically Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). DEA will be used and expanded in this research to take into account multiple views (the drivers versus the maintenance providers), important societal goals (e.g., safety) as well as uncontrollable considerations (e.g. climate, location, etc.). The specific objectives of this research are, through the use of real data, to identify (i) the relative efficiency of different strategies in performing road maintenance services, (ii) the reasons of the efficiency differences between strategies, (iii) the effects of the uncontrollable factors on the road maintenance efficiency of regions, (iv) the benchmarks (peers) and best practices that pertain to the inefficient regions in an effort to inform the decision-makers within such regions of possible efficiency improvements than can be secured in the future, and (v) the fundamental relationships between the maintenance levels of service and the budget requirements.Intellectual Merit: By taking the efficiency concept into account, this research will significantly improve the ways that are currently used to measure and model the performance of road maintenance. The findings of this research will contribute new knowledge to the asset management field in the road maintenance domain by providing a framework that is able to differentiate effective and efficient maintenance strategies from effective and inefficient ones. This research will provide a modeling approach that can be used by agencies that are confronted with the following issues: (i) agencies that want to use their existing databases; (ii) agencies that have databases that provide a considerable amount of data and information but do not isolate all critical data and information that decision-makers need to focus on, and (iii) decision-makers that need to identify the boundary of best practice performance. The research is believed to contribute also to the performance measurement field (specifically to the DEA literature) by developing a performance measurement framework that is based on engineering principles. Broader Impact: This research will attempt to: (i) increase the number of students who pursue careers in science and engineering by developing seminars about road infrastructure and optimization for high school students; (ii) increase the number of underrepresented students who pursue graduate studies by recruiting undergraduate students from a predominantly black university (NC A&T) for summer research programs; (iii) leverage Virginia Techs infrastructure for teaching and learning by developing modules to be incorporated into the curricula of graduate programs both in the Civil and Environmental and Industrial and Systems Engineering departments; (iv) leverage Virginia Techs infrastructure for research by performing interdisciplinary research to extend the expertise of civil and systems engineering disciplines to the faculty and students; (v) broadly disseminate research findings through a web site as well as conferences, journals, and trade publications related to both civil and systems engineering disciplines; and (vi) provide benefits to the society at large by providing both immediate and long term impacts on the ways civil infrastructure is preserved.