Risk-based life-cycle costing of infrastructure rehabilitation and construction alternatives

Infrastructure engineers and managers have to be aware of the economical consequences of selecting a particular rehabilitation and construction alternative for civil infrastructure units such as pavements, bridges, and pipelines. This research presents a new approach for estimating life-cycle costs and evaluating infrastructure rehabilitation and construction alternatives, derived from probability theory and simulation application. In this study, highway pavement data are used to demonstrate the model concept and development. The developed risk-based life-cycle cost model considers the time to failure of each pavement rehabilitation/construction alternative and provides additional knowledge about the uncertainty levels that accompany the estimated life-cycle costs. This paper describes the various components of the developed model, the factors affecting pavement performance and service life, the statistical stratification process of highway pavement networks, and the data input modeling and simulation utilized for the analysis. Additionally, a case study is presented to demonstrate the model implementation and its potential value to the decision-making process regarding the selection of pavement construction and rehabilitation alternatives.