20/30 Hindsight: The New Pavement Optimization in the Arizona State Highway Network

In the early 1980s, the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) launched a pioneering effort to develop a unique pavement management system (PMS) [K. Golabi, R. B. Kulkarni, G. B. Way. 1982. “A statewide pavement management system.” Interfaces Vol. 12, No. 6, 5–21]. The ADOT PMS uses a Markov process to describe the deterioration of pavement conditions due to traffic and weather and the improvement that can be achieved at various funding levels. Linear programming is used to minimize the total cost to the agency for maintaining the highway network at specified standards. The department performs the optimization across the entire network of pavements in the state, hence, it is a “network optimization system” (NOS). ADOT and Woodward-Clyde Consultants (WWC) won the 1982 CPMS/TIMS award for management science achievement for this work.