DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A NEW REHABILITATION INFORMATION AND PRIORITY PROGRAMMING SYSTEM (RIPPS)

In November 1980 the province of Alberta (Alberta Transportation) initiated a project to develop and implement a pavement management system. Stage 1 involved the design and implementation of a pavement information and needs system (PINS), which was completed in October 1982. Stage 2 involved the design and implementation of a rehabilitation information and priority programming system (RIPPS), which was completed in June 1983. PINS includes the use of recursive performance models for predicting future riding comfort index, structural adequacy index, and visual condition index. These parameters are also combined into a pavement quality index to provide an overall measure of performance. The performance predictions are used to identify the current and future needs for rehabilitation improvements for each inventory section in the network. RIPPS involves the selection of candidate rehabilitation alternatives for each section, so that economic and performance analyses of each alternative for each possible implementation year can be conducted. A heuristic procedure has been developed as a priority programming model that employs marginal cost-effectiveness analyses. The model can be operated in two modes: (a) cost minimization (given performance constraints), and (b) effectiveness maximization (given annual budget constraints). The cost minimization method produces a program of rehabilitation improvements and the required annual budgets that will meet the desired level of network performance. The effectiveness maximization method produces a program of rehabilitation improvements and the resulting network performance that meets the available funds. In this paper an overview of PINS is given, and the major components of RIPPS and its development are described. Sample outputs are provided to illustrate the results obtained from the two modes.