RELIABILITY IN PAVEMENT DESIGN: ISSUES, CONCEPTS, AND SIGNIFICANCE

Reliability as both a concept and a methodology has been an integral part of scientific research for centuries. As a methodology, however, it has not been widely embraced by the pavement design research community. A historical summary of the evolution of reliability methods in other disciplines, specifically medicine, is provided. Several issues relating reliability to pavement design and evaluation are addressed. Applications and misuses of reliability methods as related to pavement performance modeling are then presented. The object is to encourage the appropriate use of reliability methods in building, evaluating, and validating pavement performance models, thus dissipating the clouds of skepticism and distrust that have surrounded this well-founded and powerful methodology.