Short-Term Planning of Municipal Infrastructure Maintenance Operations: Problem Statement and Optimization Formulation

Multiple infrastructure projects are scattered over a broad urban area and are usually executed simultaneously. Scheduling these multi-concurrent projects, and allocating shared scarce resources to them, while accounting for their restricted deadlines and preconstruction activities (e.g., locating underground utilities, site readiness), is daunting. It demands thoughtful approaches to effectively allocate resources while ensuring that projects are completed within the specified time frame. In collaboration with a municipal drainage services provider, this paper aims to improve the short-term planning of this kind of project, as such in municipal infrastructure maintenance operations. The problem is formulated into a mathematical model to represent the objective and its relevant constraints analytically. The model is prototyped and tested in Excel and validated by conducting case studies based on data collected from the real world. We found that the developed model outperforms the partner company's current practice in providing optimum solutions and significantly faster response time.