dc.description.abstract | Pavement Maintenance Model has been playing an important role in the pavement industry. As the economy and technology progress, people and industries in Taiwan rely more on highway systems to connect their livings. In this case, highway’s service quality has always been a public concern. The Taiwan Provincial highways currently are managed and maintained by the Directorate General of Highways(DGH). However, the maintenance budget of DGH has been decreasing since 2004, while the maintenance mileage of Provincial Highway has been increasing. Hence, how to maximized the maintenance efficiency under limited source and budget has become a great challenge to DGH. In order to understand the current highway pavement maintenance status, this research visited several Taiwan pavement maintenance agencies and collect pavement condition data. After the maintenance status and cycle are known, statistic method and artificial intelligence model are used to construct pavement performance forecast model. The result of linear regression analysis showed that using correlation equation from the linear regression analysis is capable of forecasting future pavement performance. Although the result of support vector regression has better R2(0.9) than linear regression (0.7), the weather data is difficult to obtain from field inspection. Therefore, this research uses the correlation equation from the linear regression analysis to perform future pavement performance prediction;In order to calculate the Provincial Highway’s total expected maintenance cost, this research use RealCost which is the Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) software developed by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to calculate the overall maintenance cost. A case study for calculating the unit maintenance cost has been chosen through the result of linear regression and the similarity of traffic volume. After the calculation the agency cost of Provincial Highway is NTD 5.2 billion per one year, which is NTD 7 billion higher than the DGH 2014 final cost. By inputting the total expected cost into the correlation equation the predicted IRI is 2.60, which means that if DGH spends NTD 5.2 billion per one year in pavement maintenance the expected IRI is 2.60. Combine and input the IRI standard from United State and Taiwan Highway agency, if DGH want to maintain their pavement in Fair condition, the agency will have to spend at least NTD 3.9 billion, while spending at least NTD 7.5 billion will keep the pavement in very good condition. This research believes by using the equation and the RealCost software can provide Highway agencies a more viable option in pavement maintenance strategy. | en_US |