Cross-Asset Resource Allocation and the Impact on Road Network Performance

The allocation of available budget among different assets is one of the most complex problems that administrations have to face in the management of transport infrastructures. In order to effectively distribute the available budget over multiple assets (e.g. pavements, bridges, guardrails, signs, lighting systems, etc.), administrations need decision support tools. Typical practice was to allocate resources with one of the four methods: historical-based, formula-based, asset value-based, needs-based. However, none of these methods considers performances and therefore they are not able to optimize the use of the resources according to the objectives set. Therefore, transportation organizations are increasingly looking to performance-based and optimization methods to improve their transparency, credibility and decision-making in the cross-asset budget allocation processes. One of the main issues of performance-based methods is the identification of a structure of performance indicators linked to strategic objectives. This study first presents a performance-based "hybrid" framework, combining top-down/bottom-up processes, for allocating funds among different classes of highway assets using an interactive multi-objective approach. Then, some examples of performance indicators linked to the most common objectives used on the Italian road network are presented, with particular attention to some assets often considered as complementary.