Pavement management at the network level usually requires an index to select candidate projects and rank them for scheduling maintenance and rehabilitation activities. Such an index should consider all the factors that affect pavement performance. One of the problems in pavement prioritization is that there is no absolute attribute value at which a pavement has failed. Instead, it is a matter of acceptability. The acceptability of a pavement's condition involves largely the subjective judgement of the pavement engineers and the pavement users. A methodology to develop an index model called the overall acceptability index for flexible pavements using the fuzzy sets concept is presented. The methodology can capture the subjective judgement of the pavement engineer and the pavement user and combine the most important pavement attributes such as roughness, distress, structural capacity, and skid resistance into one index. A case study to apply the methodology is included, and the results are discussed. (A)
Abstract