United States Department of Transportation
i
Uncertainty-based tradeoff analysis methodology for integrated transportation investment decision-making.
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2009-10-28
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[PDF-1.98 MB]
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Abstract:Transportation agencies strive to maintain their systems in good condition and also to provide
acceptable levels of service to users. However, funding is often inadequate to meet the needs
of system preservation and expansion, and thus performance- and budget-constrained
optimization continues to be an issue. Adding complexity to this issue is the increasing visibility
of different stakeholders who advocate for consideration of a multiplicity of diverse
perspectives in the highway decision-making process. Thus agencies are grappling with the issue
of how best to incorporate multiple performance objectives in their decision-making processes.
Some of these objectives conflict with each other, and therefore a need arises for decisionmakers
to find optimal solutions that examine the tradeoffs and provide a reasonable balance
between the different objectives. Furthermore, there is the issue of uncertainty: outcomes of
projects are never exactly what the decision-makers envisage; if such inevitable uncertainties
are not duly accounted for, the final decision that may seem optimal may actually be associated
with high risk. Finally, at most agencies, the management of highway assets is divided into
several sub-areas such as pavements and safety assets. In this management structure, optimal
management decisions are carried out separately for specific types of highway assets or
management systems but do not always guarantee a global optimal strategy for all the
management systems combined. Thus, a decision-making framework that integrates all asset
types is needed to enhance decision-making and to ensure more efficient use of scarce funds.
Clearly, a need exists for a multi-objective decision-making problem that integrates the various
management systems, duly incorporates uncertainty, and helps decision-makers assess the
tradeoffs between the performance measures. This study addresses that need.
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