Dominance-based rough set approach to budget allocation in highway maintenance activities

This paper presents a decision-support system for the management of highway assets that uses a dominance-based rough set approach (DRSA). The decision concerns the allocation of maintenance funds among various highways owned by a central agency, and it takes into account multiple evaluation criteria. The proposed methodology supports the distribution of available resources to improve safety on highways, and it considers the current condition of each component of the highway infrastructure (pavements, bridges, signs, guardrails, culverts, and vegetation). The multiple-criteria decision problem in this paper is a sorting problem, i.e., the highways are assigned to preference-ordered classes, and the resources are allocated according to this sorting. The DRSA enables consideration of the quantitative and qualitative criteria, and it provides recommendations in terms of if-then decision rules, which are easily understandable by the decision maker. This approach enables an interaction between the analyst and the decision maker, and the decision maker’s preferences can be considered in the allocation of funds. This paper then presents an application of the proposed methodology to a case study performed for an Italian highway agency.