Incorporating Delay Effects into Airport Runway Pavement Management Systems

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to address pavement management decision problems at airports with multiple runways. It relaxes some of the underlying assumptions made in previous studies and explicitly considers time requirements for runway reconstruction, deterioration dependence on traffic levels, and the growth of traffic demand over time. A finite-horizon dynamic program is formulated to investigate the interplays among maintenance and repair (M&R) action time, functional interdependence between runways, and traffic growth. Results from computational studies reveal these interplays, in particular the tradeoff between present M&R action and delay cost and long-term benefits brought by significantly upgrading pavement conditions through reconstructing runways. Sensitivity analyses suggest that baseline demand, demand growth rate, and the parameter differentiating traffic-dependent transition probabilities significantly affect optimal M&R decisions and total expected cost to go.