Data and Modeling Issues Faced during the Efficiency Measurement of Road Maintenance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Within the past two decades, the road maintenance concept has been gaining tremendous attention. This has brought about new institutional changes, predominant of which is the challenge for maintenance managers to achieve maximum performance from the existing road system. Such challenge makes it imperative to implement comprehensive systems that measure road maintenance performance. However, as pointed out by the Transportation Research Board, even though the road maintenance performance measurement systems developed and implemented by the state departments of transportation elaborate on the maintenance level of service (i.e., effectiveness of the road maintenance), the fundamental relationships between the maintenance level of service and the budget requirements (i.e., efficiency of road maintenance) need more investigation. This is mainly because not knowing how “efficient” state departments of transportation are in being “effective” can lead to excessive and unrealistic maintenance budget expectations. In an effort to address this need, this research aims to develop and implement a comprehensive framework that can measure the overall efficiency of road maintenance operations. This framework is designed to consider the effects of environmental (e.g., climate, location, etc.) and operational (e.g., traffic, load, etc.) factors on such overall efficiency. This paper introduces the efficiency measurement framework and specifically provides an overview of the data and modeling issues faced during the early stages of the implementation of the framework to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s case for the maintenance of bridges.