State Increment Method of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis for Highway Management

A state increment method of life-cycle cost analysis (SILCCA) is presented for project-level evaluation of highway infrastructure maintenance options. The method involves: (1) Characterization of facility's physical and functional characteristics into discrete states; (2) specification of treatment alternatives for each state; (3) prediction of facility life-cycle performance as a series of state transitions; and (4) application of dynamic programming for life-cycle cost analysis. Four important advantages of SILCCA are: (1) A systematic procedure is used to identify treatment alternatives based on assessed condition; (2) engineering expertise is used to capture the effect of treatments on pavement condition and in turn improve the accuracy of prediction; (3) analytical and computational efficiency over traditional, Markov, and semi-Markov methods; and (4) a convenient framework for integration with network-level optimization methods. Based on the findings of a case study, it is concluded that SILCCA is systematic, accurate, and efficient.