A PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

We present a pavement management expert system developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and implemented within a geographical information system for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. The system uses pavement data regularly collected on the state's 12,000 miles of highway to assist engineers, planners, and budget analysts' management decisions about pavements to be included in 6-year improvement and 3-year maintenance programs. The system has a three-layer architecture. The lowest level suggests treatments for each of a large number of small segments of highway. The middle layer aggregates segments, suggests alternative treatments, and estimates the cost of each. The top layer prioritizes the projects and incorporates them into intermediate-range plans. The geographical information system environment enables integration of existing databases within the system using a topologically structured geographic database and specialized software.