Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 21 (2006) 193–204
True Optimization of Pavement Maintenance
Options with What-If Models
Koji Tsunokawa,∗ Dinh Van Hiep & Riaz Ul-Islam
Graduate School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-Okubo, Sakura-ku,
Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken, 338-8570, Japan
Abstract: A prototypical problem road agencies are
faced with is to find the optimal application schedule of
maintenance works for a given road section. To solve
such problems what-if models such as the road trans-
port investment model (RTIM), the highway economic
requirements system (HERS), and the highway develop-
ment and management tool (HDM-4) are widely used
to predict the consequences of different maintenance op-
tions. With these models maintenance options to be com-
pared must be exogenously specified by an analyst, and
the “optimization” with these routines simply chooses the
best among those compared. As there are usually infinite
numbers of options, it is impossible to exhaust all of them
and only suboptimal optimizers may be found with this
approach. The present article proposes the use of gradient
search methods with what-if models to find the true op-
tima without requiring exogenously specified alternatives.
It demonstrates through a case study the feasibility of the
use of the steepest descent method and the conjugate gra-
dient method along with HDM-4 to find the true optimum
maintenance options.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Road managing agencies strive to maintain their net-
works by selecting maintenance alternatives that mini-
mize total transport cost (TTC) or maximize benefits to
the stakeholders in the long term. This requires the use
of analysis systems that can predict the costs and bene-
∗ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: koji-t@post.
saitama-u.ac.jp.

C 2006 Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA,
and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
fits of different maintenance options over time. Accord-
ingly, what-if models of pavement management analysis
such as RTIM (Cundill, 1993), HERS (FHWA, 1998),
and the highway development and management tool
(HDM-4) (PIARC, 2002) that predict the consequences
of different maintenance options are often employed
to “optimize” a maintenance schedule. These models
are built on sets of relationships for predicting pave-
ment performance and corresponding user benefits over
time taking into account the specified maintenance op-
tions. The relationships in the what-if models are the
product of extensive research undertaken during the
last four decades (see, e.g., Moavenzadeh et al., 1971;
Abaynayaka et al., 1977; CRRI, 1982; GEIPOT, 1982;
Hide, 1982; Watanatada et al., 1987; NDLI, 1995; Ben-
nett, 1996).
The major weakness of the what-if models is that they
require exogenously specified maintenance options to be
compared. Therefore, when they are used to “optimize”
maintenance options, which is often the case, they are
not optimizing them in its true sense; they are merely
used to find the best among those exogenously specified.
As there are infinite numbers of options, it is impossi-
ble to exhaust all of them to find the true optimizer and
only suboptimal options may be found. Usually, alterna-
tives to be compared are generated with “engineering
judgment,” and the situation may not be so bad as a
mere “trial and error” (see, e.g., Bhandari et al., 1987;
Riley et al., 1994; Tsunokawa et al., 2002). However,
it does not diminish the necessity of developing a sys-
tematic and efficient search procedure that obtains true,
global optimizers while obviating exogenously specified
alternatives.
This article shows how standard optimization algo-
rithms can be used with what-if models in a systematic
way to find global optimum maintenance options. The
194 Tsunokawa, Van Hiep & Ul-Islam

article uses HDM-4 to show the applicability of the al-

Start
gorithms, but the procedure presented is general and can
be used with other what-if models of pavement manage-
ment analysis.
Road Section Characteristics,
Environmental Conditions,
1.2 Highway development and management tools Prices, Discount Rate,
Analysis Period, etc.
The HDM-4 (PIARC, 2002) and its predecessor, the
highway design and maintenance standards model
(HDM-III) (Watanatada et al., 1987), have been used in Exogenously Specified Maintenance Option
more than 100 countries over the last three decades. The
models have been applied to investigate the viability of
road projects and to compare the economic benefits asso-
Loop of Analysis Period
ciated with various road investment options (Bhandari
et al., 1987; The World Bank, 1988; Riley et al., 1994;
Veerargavan and Reddy, 2003).
Given the data on road section, environmental condi- Predict Yearly Pavement Performance (such
as roughness, rutting, texture, etc.) Before
tions, prices, discount rate, analysis period, maintenance and After Maintenance (if applicable)
option, etc., HDM-4 predicts annual pavement perfor-
mance, simulates maintenance applications, and calcu-
lates road user and agency costs (see Figure 1). The road
Predict/ Calculate Yearly Costs (Road Users
user and agency costs are discounted and added to obtain No Cost, Road Agency Cost, etc.)
the TTC in its present value.

2 OBJECTIVES
All Years
Exhausted?
The basic objective of this article is to examine if gradient
methods, a family of standard optimization algorithms,
can be used to find true optimal maintenance options
Yes

with HDM-4, a what-if model. Two gradient methods,

the steepest descent and conjugate gradient methods, are Calculate Discounted Total Transport Cost
tested in this study. To achieve this objective, we have to (Sum of Road Users and Agency Costs)
answer the following questions:

1. Is it feasible to use these gradient methods in con-

junction with HDM-4? These gradient methods are
primarily used in the optimization of continuous
variables, while options to be tested with HDM-4
are largely defined by discrete variables (e.g., over-
lay options may be defined as 5 mm overlays to be
applied every 5 years or 7 mm overlays to be ap-
plied every 8 years, but not as 5.245 mm overlays
to be applied every 5.345 years). Therefore, it is not
obvious if these methods work with HDM-4 and are
worth investigating.
2. What procedure should be used to avoid local op-
tima? These gradient methods are known to be
handicapped by their likelihood to be trapped in
local optima if objective functions to be optimized
are not well-shaped. Therefore, we are interested in
finding the “shape” of the HDM-4 objective func-
tion, and if ill-shaped, we will have to devise a pro-
cedure for alleviating this shortcoming.
End
Fig. 1. Total transport cost calculation using HDM-4.
3. Which of these gradient methods is more suit-
able to use with HDM-4 than the other? Although
the computational procedure is much simpler with
the steepest gradient method than with the conju-
gate gradient, convergence is known to be slower
with the former if the objective function has long,
curved, and narrow valleys. We are interested in
finding out which one is more suitable considering
this trade-off.
We will try to answer these questions by conducting
a case study. The following sections describe the proce-
dure, the case study, and the findings.
 True optimization of pavement maintenance options
3 PROCEDURE
3.1 The optimization problem of pavement
maintenance options
We consider a problem of finding the optimal number of
maintenance applications and the best timings and inten-
sities thereof to maintain a given road section during a
predefined analysis period T. Define a maintenance op-
tion as a set of maintenance works of different intensities,
w1 , w2 , . . . , wk, applied at different timings, t1 , t2 , . . . , tk,
in a predefined analysis period T, where k denotes the
number of maintenance works included in an option.
An example of a maintenance work is an overlay whose
intensity may be represented by its thickness. If hetero-
geneous maintenance works are considered, the intensity
may be represented by a common denominator such as
unit cost, incremental pavement strength, etc.
In the HDM-4, maintenance options are specified as
either scheduled or condition-responsive. Scheduled op-
tions are specified in the same manner as defined here.
Condition-responsive ones are specified by the thresh-
old values of pavement condition indices such as rough-
ness values, r1 , r2 , r3 , . . . , at which maintenance works
are applied in the simulation of pavement deterioration,
and their intensities, w1 , w 2 , w 3 , . . . . As each thresh-
old value of a condition-responsive work corresponds
to a specific application timing, however, there always
exists an equivalent scheduled option corresponding to
any condition-responsive option (see Figure 2). Thus,
the present definition of a maintenance option is gen-
eral enough to include both specifications.
The optimization problem of pavement maintenance
options is either the maximization or minimization of an
objective function f (k; t1 , t2 , . . . , tk; w1 , w2 , . . . , wk), de-
pending on the specification of the objective function. As
the optimal number of maintenance works to be applied
in the analysis period, k, is not known a priori, it must
also be optimized. In this case, if there are W different in-
Roughness
w3
Overlay of w1
r3
w2
r1
r2
t1 t2 t3 Time
Fig. 2. Condition-responsive maintenance option.
195
T
tensities and T discrete times, there are k=0 WTk Ck cases
of possible options from which the true optimizer must
be found. Note that the case of no maintenance works
is included as a possible solution. Of course the number
of cases becomes infinity if no discreteness is assumed
for any variable. It is obvious from this expression that
it is almost hopeless to find true optimizers by applying
what-if models in a trial-and-error manner.
3.2 Gradient search methods applied with HDM-4
HDM-4 computes the net benefit (NB), for each exoge-
nously specified maintenance option as the difference in
the TTC, and that of the base option, TTC0 in present
values (see Figure 1 for the calculation of TTC using
HDM-4). The base option represents a do-minimum or
a business-as-usual case. Thus, the optimization problem
may be written as:
Maximize NB(k; t1 , t2 , . . . , tk; w1 , w2 , . . . , wk)
k;t1 ,t2 ,...,tk ;w1 ,w2 ,...,wk
(1)
where NB = TTC0 − TTC(k; t1 , t2 , . . . , tk; w1 , w2 , . . . ,
wk).
It should be noted here that HDM-4 is a complex sim-
ulation type model and it is not possible to write the
objective function and various constraints in explicit ex-
pressions. One of the challenges the present study is
faced with is how to construct an optimization proce-
dure with an implicit objective function such as that of
HDM-4. In the usual HDM-4 applications, such max-
imization problems are “solved” by comparing a small
number of exogenously specified alternative options and
simply identifying the one with the largest NB. There is
no guarantee that the global optimum can be found with
such a procedure, and the “solution” may most likely be
a suboptimal option. The existence of the solution to the
maximization problem (1) may be assured by consider-
ing the trade-off between the two components of TTC,
user costs and agency costs, depicted in Figure 3.
We will examine if gradient methods can be used in
conjunction with HDM-4 to truly solve the problem for
the global optimum option. In what follows, a procedure
for applying the gradient methods with HDM-4 is pre-
sented, which is then tested in a case study to examine
its performance as a problem solver. The proposed pro-
cedure consists of two routines, optimization of main-
tenance works (OMW) and optimization of number of
maintenance works (ONM). As described in the next
sections and depicted in the flow charts of these rou-
tines in Figures 4 and 5, HDM-4 is run multiple times
within OMW, which further is run multiple times within
the loops of ONM to find the optimal number of mainte-
nance works as well as the optimal timings and intensities
thereof.
196 Tsunokawa, Van Hiep & Ul-Islam

where t ij and wij , j = 1, 2, . . . , k are arbitrary

A gen cy costs includ e tho se of initial
construction and m aintenance. small increments for corresponding variables.
Step 3. Improve the maintenance option by “moving
U ser costs include tho se of vehicle
operation and travel tim e. along” the search direction as follows:
C osts X i+1 = X i + α i s i (4)
T T C : T o ta l T ra nsp o rt C o sts
where s i is the search direction determined as be-
low:
If the steepest descend method is used
A g en cy C o sts
U ser C o sts
s i = ∇NB(X i ) (5)
M aintenan ce S tandard If the conjugate gradient method is used
O ptim a l M ainten an ce S tand ard 
i
∇NB(X i ) if i = 0
s =
Fig. 3. Trade-off between agency costs and user costs. ∇NB(X i ) + β i ∇NB(X i−1 ) otherwise
(6)
3.2.1 Optimization of maintenance works. The opti- where β i is given by the following equation
mization over the number of maintenance works, k,
∇NB(X i )T ∇NB(X i )
involves ordinary one-dimensional search for which a βi = (7)
number of efficient algorithms may be available. Such ∇NB(X i−1 )T ∇NB(X i−1 )
a routine is presented in the next section. Assume for where α i is a scalar that maximizes the value
now that a certain value of k satisfying 1 ≤ k ≤ T has of NB(X i+1 ), which can be found by applying a
been chosen. Then optimal values of t1 , t2 , . . . , tk and usual one-dimensional search with multiple runs of
w1 , w2 , . . . , wk may be obtained by implementing the fol- HDM-4.
lowing steps, called OMW (see Figure 4): Step 4. Check convergence. Set i = i + 1 and go to
Step 1. Define an initial maintenance option, X 0 such Step 2 unless the following inequality is satisfied.
that NB(X i+1 ) − NB(X i )
Convergence index ≡ ≤γ
NB(X i )
X 0 = t10 , t20 , . . . , tk0 ; w10 , w20 , . . . , wk0
 
(2) (8)
where γ is a predetermined convergence criterion.
where t10 , t20 , . . . , tk0 and w10 , w20 , . . . , wk0 are the ap- If satisfied, maximization has been completed.
plication years and intensities, respectively, of the
maintenance works of the initial maintenance op- 3.2.2 Optimization of the number of maintenance works.
tion. Set i = 0 and go to Step 2. The optimal number of maintenance works may be ob-
Step 2. Run HDM-4 for maintenance options X i , tained by a routine presented below, called ONM (see
(t1i + t1i , t2i , . . . , tki ; w1i , w2i , . . . , wki ), . . . , (t1i , t2i , . . . , Figure 5), which is based on the second-order Tailor
tki ; w1i , w2i , . . . , wki + wki ) to compute the val- expansion of the objective function. The optimization
ues of NB(X i ), NB((t1i + t1i ), . . . , wki ), . . . , and over k starts with an initial value of k, k0 , satisfying
NB(t1i , . . . , (wki + wki )) and obtain the gradient of 1 ≤ k0 ≤ T − 1. In this section, net benefit function NB is
NB evaluated at X i as follows: represented as NB(k) denoting the maximized function
⎧
⎪ ∂NB ⎪
⎫ obtained by applying OMW.
⎪ ⎪
⎨ ∂t1 ⎪
⎪ ⎪
Step 1. Go to Step 4 if k0 = 0 or T. Otherwise, com-
⎪ ⎬
i
∇NB(X ) = ··· pute NB(k0 − 1), NB(k0 ), and NB(k0 + 1) by using
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ∂NB ⎪ ⎪
⎪ OMW, and obtain the approximate values of the
⎩ ⎭
∂wk X i first and second derivatives of the NB function eval-
⎧
⎪ NB t1i + t1i , . . . , wki − NB(X i ) ⎪
   ⎫ uated at k0 :
⎪ ⎪
NB′ (k0 ) ≈ {NB(k0 + 1) − NB(k0 − 1)}/2
⎪ ⎪
t1i
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎨ ⎬
≈ i  i . . . NB′′ (k0 ) ≈ NB(k0 + 1) + NB(k0 − 1) − 2NB(k0 )
i i ⎪

⎪ NB t1 , . . . , wk + wk − NB(X ) ⎪
⎪
(9)
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
wki It is worth pointing out here that NB(0) = 0 by
⎩ ⎭
(3) definition.
 True optimization of pavement maintenance options 197

Start

HDM-4 input
ONM data for a given
Trend Curve Optimal
road section
Control Model †

Define a number of
maintenance
applications k

Define an initial maintenance option

X 0 = ( t 10 , t 20 ,..., t k0 ; w 10 , w 0
2 ,..., w 0
k )
Set i = 0

Run HDM-4 to obtain:

NB( X i ) , NB ((t1i + Δt1i ), ..., wki ) , … , NB (t1i , ..., ( wki + Δwki ))

Compute ∇NB ( X i ) by using Eq.(3)

Obtain improved maintenance option

i=i+1
X i +1 by using Eq. (4)

No Convergence check by
using Ineq. (8)

Yes

Optimal maintenance option for a given k obtained

Value of NB(k) obtained

† Tsunokawa and Schofer (1994)

Fig. 4. Flow-chart of OMW.

Step 2. If NB′′ (k0 ) is negative, go to Step 3. Otherwise, Step 4. The maximizing k is obtained.
replace k0 with k0 − 1 or k0 + 1 depending on the
sign of NB′ (i.e., k0 − 1 if negative and k0 + 1 oth-
erwise) and go to Step 1. 4 A CASE STUDY
Step 3. Solve the following second-order Tailor expan-
sion of the net benefit function NB(k) around k0 for To examine the applicability of the routines described
the maximizing k: above, OMW and ONM, they were implemented in a
case study. In what follows, input data used in the case
NB(k) ≈ NB(k0 ) + (k − k0 )NB′ (k0 )
study are described, followed by the discussion of some
+ 1/2(k − k0 )2 NB′′ (k0 ) (10) simplifications adopted in this study. Finally, results are
∗ presented with the evaluation of the routines and discus-
The value of maximizing k, k , may be obtained by
the following expression: sion of their applicability.
k0 NB′′ (k0 ) − NB′ (k0 )
   
k∗ = Max 0, Min Int ,T 4.1 Input data
NB′′ (k0 )
(11) We considered the optimization of maintenance options
where Int(x) denotes the nearest integer of x. for a given road section. The characteristics of the road
If k∗ = k0 , replace k0 with k∗ and go to Step 1. Go section are adopted from one of the Project Analysis
to Step 4 otherwise. Case Studies described in the Volume 2 of the Highway
198 Tsunokawa, Van Hiep & Ul-Islam

Start

Trend Curve Optimal

HDM-4 input Control Model †
data for a given
road section

Define an initial value of k 0

1 ≤ k0 ≤ T − 1

Yes
k 0 =0 or k 0 =T ?

No

Compute NB( k 0 -1), NB( k 0 ) and NB( k 0 +1)

by using OMW

Compute NB'( k 0 ) and NB''( k 0 ) by using Eq. (9)

Yes Obtain k* by
NB''( k 0 )<0 ? using Eq. (11)

No
Yes
k0 = k0 − 1 NB'( k 0 )<0 ?

No
k0 = k0 + 1

No
k0 = k * k * = k0 ?
Yes

Optimal value of k found

† Tsunokawa and Schofer (1994)

Fig. 5. Flow chart of ONM.

Development and Management Series (Kerali et al.,
2000). Major features of the section are discussed below.
4.1.1 Geometric characteristics. A 50-km homogeneous
section of paved road with 8-m carriageway and 1-m
shoulder on each side is considered. The average hor-
izontal curvature, super-elevation, aggregate rise and
fall, and number of rises and falls are 75 deg/km, 3%,
20 m/km, and 2, respectively.
4.1.2 Traffic and initial pavement condition. Two sets of
traffic volumes and pavement conditions are considered
in this study. Setting 1 represents a combination of a
relatively low traffic volume of 5,000 vpd with an initial
pavement roughness of 6 m/km international roughness
index (IRI) at the beginning of year 2004 (the lower the
IRI the smoother the pavement). Setting 2 represents
a situation of a relatively high traffic volume of 8,000
vpd combined with an initial roughness of 7 m/km IRI
at the same timing. The assumed traffic composition and
growth rates of vehicles for both settings are shown in
Table 1. Table 2 shows the pavement condition details
assumed in these cases.
4.1.3 Analysis period and discount rate. A 20-year anal-
ysis period starting from 2004 and a 6% discount rate are
used in the study.
 True optimization of pavement maintenance options 199

Table 1
Composition and annual growth rate of traffic

Medium Light goods Light Medium Heavy Articulated Medium

Vehicle types car vehicle truck truck truck truck bus Total

Composition (%) 30 20 15 20 10 2.5 2.5 100

Annual growth rate (%) 4.0 4.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0

Table 2
Initial pavement condition

Roughness Total area of Ravelled Number of Edge break Mean rut Texture Structural Subgrade
(IRI) cracking (%) area (%) potholes (No./km) area (m2 /km) depth (mm) depth number CBR (%)

Setting 1 6 10 10 2 10 5 0.30 3.7 8

Setting 2 7 14 12 3 11 6 0.30 3.7 8

4.1.4 Maintenance options. For simplicity, we consid-
ered maintenance options consisting of overlays only.
It is assumed in this case study that when overlays are
applied, they are applied for the whole stretch of the
50-km homogeneous section. In practical applications,
however, if a 50-km long section is found to be too
long to regard as homogeneous, it may be subdivided
into any number of homogeneous sections where differ-
ent maintenance works may be applied. We are using a
50-km long homogeneous section simply because the
above mentioned HDM-4 case study uses it, and the
length of the section does not essentially affect the results
of our analyses.
Note that cases with maintenance options consisting of
heterogeneous maintenance works including resealing,
etc., can readily be dealt with in a similar manner. In such
cases, maintenance intensities may be represented by a
common denominator such as unit cost per kilometer, in-
crease in pavement strength (e.g., in adjusted structural
number) caused by maintenance work, etc. Hiep and
Tsunokawa (2005) used incremental pavement strength
in their analysis of the optimal maintenance options con-
sisting of overlays, reseals, and reconstruction.
Scheduled overlay treatments with various thick-
nesses ranging from 3 to 7 cm were considered as mainte-
nance works in this study. It was assumed that all overlays
were associated with the routine maintenance consist-
ing of pothole patching applied when severely damaged
areas reach 5% and crack sealing applied when wide
structural cracking areas reach 10%. Table 3 lists the unit
area cost of different overlays and routine maintenance
works. NB values of different options were computed
with a do-minimum option as the base where no main-
tenance works except routine maintenance are applied.
The TTC0 values were computed as $524.93 million and
$923.59 million for Settings 1 and 2, respectively.
4.2 Simplifying assumptions used in the case study
When computing the approximate values of gradient us-
ing Equation (3), we used 1 year for all time increments,
t ij , and 1 cm for all thickness increments, wij . Further-
more, the values of t’s are rounded to the nearest inte-
gers after the computation of Equation (4) due to the
fact that the minimum time interval between two main-
tenance works in HDM-4 is 1 year. Similarly the values
of w’s are rounded to the nearest integers for simplicity.
Even with these simplifications, however, there are 5k20 Ck
cases of different maintenance options for each value of
k (k = 0, 1, . . . , 20) from which the optimizers must be
found. The value of 0.5% is used for the convergence
criterion γ in inequality (8). It may be worth mentioning
that a single HDM-4 run with one maintenance option
may take around 10 seconds on a CPU of about 1.0 GHz.

Table 3
Economic unit costs of maintenance works

Overlays by thickness (cm)

Maintenance works Pothole patching Crack sealing 3 4 5 6 7

Per sqm cost (US$) 12 5 9 12 15 18 21

200 Tsunokawa, Van Hiep & Ul-Islam

Table 4
Convergence process with the steepest descent method

NB(X i ) CI (%)
i (Run number) X i (note 1) [ti ; wi ] NB ; ∂ NB ]
∇NB(X i ) [ ∂ ∂t αi ($ million) (note 2)
i ∂w i

Case 1 0 [4, 9, 19; 5, 4, 3] [2.21, −0.23, 1.00; −1.37, −0.77, −0.30] 1.0 80.73
1 [4, 9, 18; 6, 5, 3] [2.95, −0.59, 0.53; 0.10, −0.01, −0.10] 2.7 82.87 2.65
2 [4, 11, 17; 6, 5, 3] [2.68, 0.26, 0.06; −0.34, 0.19, 0.08] 1.6 83.73 1.04
3 [4, 11, 17; 7, 5, 3] 84.07 0.41
Case 2 0 [10, 16, 22; 6, 6, 6] [4.01, 0.56, 0.21; −0.78, 0.38, 0.41] 6.4 61.81
1 [4, 12, 21; 7, 4, 3] [2.31, 0.14, 0.95; 0.00, −0.26, 0.22] 3.0 82.99 34.27
2 [4, 12, 18; 7, 5, 3] [2.87, 0.16, 0.12; 0.00, 0.32, 0.20] 6.0 84.34 1.63
3 [4, 11, 17; 7, 3, 3] 84.52 0.21
Case 3 0 [4, 12, 19; 6, 4, 3] [2.00, 0.56, 0.63; −0.14, −0.38, 0.03] 0.8 82.88
1 [4, 12, 18; 7, 4, 3] [2.68, 0.17, 0.26; 0.00, 0.15, 0.11] 4.0 84.49 1.94
2 [4, 11, 17; 7, 3, 3] 84.52 0.04
Note 1: The first three numbers represent the application years of overlays in two digits after year 2000 and the next three numbers the thicknesses
of overlays in centimeters.
Note 2: Convergence index defined in inequality (8).

4.3 Study scenarios be found. Study 2 examined the performance of ONM

Two studies were conducted to examine the applicability
of the two proposed routines, OMW and ONM. Study 1
implemented OMW only (with a prespecified value of k)
to answer the first question posted at the outset. To an-
swer the second question, OMW was run (with a pre-
specified value of k) with different initial maintenance
options (i.e., timings and intensities) to examine if they
lead to different local optima. Finally, the performances
of the two gradient methods were compared to answer
the third question.
To use the gradient methods for finding true optima, an
optimal number of maintenance applications must also
nested with OMW as a procedure for doing this. Study 2
entailed a large number of OMW runs under different
conditions, thus also enhancing the observation of the
applicability of OMW.
4.4 Results
4.4.1 Study 1. The number of overlays was assumed to
be three in this study. It implemented OMW only to find
the optimal timings and intensities of three overlays at
the model road section under Setting 1. The possible
number of different options amounts to 142,500 in this

Table 5
Convergence process with the conjugate gradient method

NB(X i ) CI (%)
i (Run number) i
X (note 1) ti ; wi i NB ; ∂ NB ]
∇NB(X ) [ ∂ ∂t α i
β i
($ million) (note 2)
i ∂wi
Case 1 0 [4, 9, 19; 5, 4, 3] [2.21, −0.23, 1.00; −1.37, −0.77, −0.30] 1.0 80.73
1 [4, 9, 18; 6, 5, 3] [2.95, −0.59, 0.53; 0.10, −0.01, −0.10] 0.3 1.10 82.87 2.65
2 [4, 9, 17; 6, 5, 3] 83.16 0.35
Case 2 0 [10, 16, 22; 6, 6, 6] [4.01, 0.56, 0.21; −0.78, 0.38, 0.41] 6.4 61.81
1 [4, 12, 21; 7, 4, 3] [3.77, 0.35, 1.03; −0.29, −0.12, 0.37] 3.5 0.37 82.99 34.27
2 [4, 11, 17; 7, 4, 3] [2.97, −0.16, 0.09; 0.00, 0.29, 0.06] 0.0 1.40 84.36 1.65
3 [4, 11, 17; 7, 4, 3] 84.36 0.00
Case 3 0 [4, 12, 19; 6, 4, 3] [2.00, 0.56, 0.63; −0.14, −0.38, 0.03] 0.8 82.88
1 [4, 12, 18; 7, 4, 3] [2.68, 0.17, 0.26; 0.00, 0.15, 0.11] 0.0 0.91 84.45 1.89
2 [4, 12, 18; 7, 4, 3] 84.45 0.00
Note 1: The first three numbers represent the application years of overlays in two digits after year 2000 and the next three numbers the thicknesses
of overlays in centimeters.
Note 2: Convergence index defined in inequality (8).
 True optimization of pavement maintenance options
case. Two gradient methods were used and compared. To
examine if the solutions differ depending on the assumed
initial options, OMW was run with three substantially
different ones. They are: Case 1, where three overlays of
the thicknesses of 5, 4, and 3 cm applied in years 2004,
2009, and 2019, respectively; Case 2, where overlays of
the same thickness of 6 cm applied in years 2010, 2016,
and 2022, respectively; and Case 3, where overlays of the
thicknesses of 6, 4, and 3 cm applied in years 2004, 2012,
and 2019, respectively.
The results are summarized in Tables 4 and 5 that show
the convergence processes of each gradient method for
the three cases. One HDM-4 run produced the seven
values of NB’s appearing in the rightmost expression of
Equation (3) for each maintenance option, X i , thus en-
abling the computation of the gradient value. The one-
dimensional search for the optimal α i at step 3 required
around 3–4 HDM-4 runs. The total number of HDM-
4 runs required to find the optimum options with the
above convergence criterion was about the same with
both gradient methods and were around 10–15, depend-
ing on the “distance” of the chosen initial option from the
optimum. Important findings from this study are summa-
rized below:
1. Both gradient methods and three different initial
maintenance options tested found very similar op-
timal options which are different only by 1.6% at
most in NB values.
2. Convergence with 0.5% criterion was attained
very rapidly in 3–4 iterations with both gradient
methods.
3. Both in terms of optimum options found and the
number of iterations required to find the optima, the
performances of both gradient methods are quite
similar.
4. The computational effort required to find the opti-
mum options were similar with both methods, to-
talling around 10–15 HDM-4 runs.
Based on the above findings, the gradient methods
were found to be applicable with HDM-4 to find the
optimal option of the given number of overlays. The
fact that substantially different initial options found al-
most the same optimal options seems to indicate that the
HDM-4 objective function is well-shaped and the gradi-
ent methods are free from their notorious handicap of
being trapped in local optima. Between the two gradient
methods, the steepest gradient appears to be superior be-
cause no gains were observed with the use of the more
complicated method.
4.4.2 Study 2. The objective of Study 2 is to test the
performance of the entire true optimization procedure,
OMW nested in ONM. Based on the result of Study 1,
201
Table 6
Convergence process of ONM nested with OMW
′ ′′
k0 NB (k0 ) NB (k0 ) k∗
Setting 1 2 5.61 −9.42 3
(A low volume case) 3 0.38 −1.03 3
Setting 2 4 0.77 −0.49 6
(A high volume case) 6 −0.35 −1.06 6
only the steepest descent method with only one initial
maintenance option was used in OMW. As variable k
can take only T + 1 different values, optimum k can be
found by running OMW for all values of k. If HDM-4
objective function is unimodal with respect to k, how-
ever, optimal k may be found more efficiently with ONM.
Study 2 applied ONM in the two settings of traffic and
initial pavement conditions with two different initial val-
ues of k, 2, and 4, respectively. These initial values were
chosen arbitrarily for demonstration purposes only. The
result is summarized in Table 6 that shows that the opti-
mal values of k, 3, and 6 respectively, were found only in
two iterations. (The timings and intensities of the optimal
overlays can be found in Tables 7 and 8, and described
below as the solutions for k = 3 and 6, respectively.)
To confirm that the proposed procedure found the true
optima, “exhaustive” search with only OMW was con-
ducted with reasonably large numbers of k’s ranging be-
tween 0 and 20. The results are summarized in Tables 7
and 8 for the two settings. Note that the case with three
overlays of Table 7 is identical to Case 2 of Table 4. For all
values of k, OMW was found to converge very quickly;
in two to four iterations for Setting 1 and in only two it-
erations for Setting 2. These results indicate that OMW
with steepest descent method works satisfactorily under
a wide range of conditions.
Figure 6 depicts the relationships between the num-
ber of overlay applications and the value of the OMW-
optimized objective function for the two settings. It
shows that the curves are both unimodal and the optimal
numbers of overlays are three and six, respectively; not
surprisingly, the same as the above result.
This result indicates that compared with the exhaus-
tive search, ONM has a potential of substantially saving
the number of iterations for obtaining the optima.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The present article demonstrated that true optimum
maintenance options may be found with HDM-4 by ap-
plying the proposed procedure. The application of gra-
dient search methods with HDM-4 was found to be fea-
sible both in terms of computational effort and freeness
202 Tsunokawa, Van Hiep & Ul-Islam

Table 7
Exhaustive search for optimal k with only OMW (setting 1: a low volume case)

i (Run NB(X i ) CI (%)

number) X i (note 1) [ti ; wi ] NB ; ∂ NB ]
∇NB(X i ) [ ∂ ∂t αi ($ mill.) (note 2)
i ∂wi
k=1 0 [4; 5] [0.33; 7.12] 0.3 60.43
1 [4; 7] [1.35; 0.00] 0.0 73.30 21.29
2 [4; 7] 73.30 0.00
k=2 0 [4, 12; 6, 5] [−2.95, 0.12; 1.32, 0.75] 15.0 81.25
1 [4, 14; 7, 7] [−2.78, −0.37; 0.00, 0.00] 0.0 83.62 2.92
2 [4, 14; 7, 7] 83.62 0.00
k=3 0 [10, 16, 22; 6, 6, 6] [4.01, 0.56, 0.21; −0.78, 0.38, 0.41] 6.4 61.81
1 [4, 12, 21; 7, 4, 3] [2.31, 0.14, 0.95; 0.00, −0.26, 0.22] 3.0 82.99 34.27
2 [4, 12, 18; 7, 5, 3] [2.87, 0.16, 0.12; 0.00, 0.32, 0.20] 6.0 84.34 1.63
3 [4, 11, 17; 7, 3, 3] 84.52 0.21
k=4 0 [4, 9, 14, 19; 6, 4, 3, 3] [−3.07, 0.04, 0.08, −0.24; −0.46, 1.0 83.93
−0.57, −0.32, −0.27]
1 [4, 9, 14, 19; 6, 3, 3, 3] 84.39 0.55
k=6 0 [4, 8, 12, 15, 18, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] [−3.17, 0.05, 1.30, 0.89, 1.18, 0.00; 0.4 82.13
−0.75 −0.82, −0.66, −0.56, −0.48,
−0.42]
1 [4, 8, 13, 15, 18, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] [−3.11, 0.15, −0.01, −0.03, 0.53, 2.5 83.43 1.58
−0.16; −0.52, −0.66, −0.40, 0.00,
−0.43, −0.42]
2 [4, 8, 13, 15, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] [−3.17, 0.23, 0.05, −0.49, −0.39, 0.0 83.96 0.63
−0.93; −0.37, −0.57, −0.16, 0.00,
−0.19, 0.00]
3 [4, 8, 13, 15, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 83.96 0.00
k=9 0 [4, 7, 10,12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22; 6, 3, 3, [−0.98, 1.85, 0.15, −0.25, 0.10, −0.04, 0.4 81.60
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] −0.02, 0.05, 0.00; −0.86, −0.92,
−0.74, 0.00, −0.54, 0.00, −0.41,
0.00, −0.41]
1 [4, 8, 10,12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22; 6, 3, 3, [−3.16, −0.93, −1.56, 0.07, −1.32, 0.0 83.45 2.26
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 0.00, −1.18, −0.16, 0.00; −0.71,
−0.79, 0.00, −0.60, −0.02, −0.46,
0.00, −0.41, 0.00]
2 [4, 8, 10,12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22; 6, 3, 3, 83.45 0.00
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
k = 13 0 [4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, [−3.16, −0.71, 0.06, 0.00, 0.03, −0.14, 0.0 82.27
21, 22; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00,
3, 3] 0.00; 0.00, 0.00, −0.80, 0.00, −0.63,
0.00, −0.52, 0.00, 0.00, −0.45, 0.00,
0.00, −0.41]
1 [4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 82.27 0.00
21, 22; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3,
3, 3]
k = 18 0 [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15, 16, [−1.79, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.0 80.80
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; 5, 3, 3, 3, 3, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00,
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00;
−0.68, 0.00, −0.88, 0.00, 0.00,
−0.76, 0.00, 0.00, −0.64, 0.00, 0.00,
−0.54, 0.00, 0.00, −0.46, 0.00, 0.00,
−0.41]
1 [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15, 16, 80.80 0.00
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; 5, 3, 3, 3, 3,
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
Note 1: The first three numbers represent the application years of overlays in two digits after year 2000 and the next three numbers the thicknesses
of overlays in centimeters.
Note 2: Convergence index defined in inequality (8).
 True optimization of pavement maintenance options 203

Table 8
Exhaustive search for optimal k with only OMW(setting 2: a high volume case)

i (Run NB(X i ) CI (%)

number) X i (note 1) [ ti ; wi ] NB ; ∂ NB ]
∇NB(X i ) [ ∂ ∂t αi ($ mill.) (note 2)
i ∂wi
k=3 0 [4, 10, 16; 6, 6, 3] [−6.20, −0.33, −0.05; 2.43, 0.98, 1.02] 3.5 215.54
1 [4, 10, 16; 7, 7, 7] 220.38 2.25
k=4 0 [4, 10, 14, 18; 7, 4, 4, 4] [−6.74, −0.44, −0.12, −0.15; 0.00, 0.0 221.40
−0.24, −0.05, −0.87]
1 [4, 10, 14, 18; 7, 4, 4, 4] 221.40 0.00
k=5 0 [4, 9, 13, 17, 21; 7, 4, 4, 4, 3] [−7.17, −0.07, −0.04, −0.25, −0.78; 0.0 221.43
0.00, −0.51, −0.24, −0.10, −0.33]
1 [4, 9, 13, 17, 21; 7, 4, 4, 4, 3] 221.43 0.00
k=6 0 [4, 8, 12, 15, 18, 21; 7, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] [−7.25, 0.02, −1.70, −1.40, −0.36, 0.0 222.11
−0.58; 0.00, −0.62, −0.40, −0.30,
−0.26, −0.36]
1 [4, 8, 12, 15, 18, 21; 7, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 222.11 0.00
k=7 0 [4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, [−7.60, −0.84, −1.10, −1.67, −0.58, 0.0 221.23
3, 3] −0.15, −0.53; −0.30, −0.53,−0.58,
−0.38, −0.19, −0.30, 0.00]
1 [4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 221.23 0.00
3, 3]
k=9 0 [4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, [−7.29, 0.16, 0.28, 0.00, 0.82, −0.24, 0.7 220.66
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 0.70, −0.67, −0.27; 0.43 −0.29,
0.00, 0.16, 0.00, 0.38, 0.00, 0.26,
0.00]
1 [4, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21; 6, 3, 3, 221.19 0.24
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
k = 12 0 [4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, [−6.59, 0.55, 0.73, 0.86, −0.33, 0.94, 0.6 220.81
22; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] −0.37, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00;
0.56, 0.00, 0.06, 0.00, 0.17, 0.00,
0.04, 0.00, −0.14, 0.00, 0.00, −0.39]
1 [4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 221.15 0.15
22; 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
k = 18 0 [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, [−5.97, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.0 220.70
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; 6, 3, 3, 3, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00,
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3] 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00;
−0.30, 0.00, −0.75, 0.00, −0.59,
0.00, 0.00, −0.42, 0.00, 0.00, −0.28,
0.00, 0.00, 0.00, −0.24, 0.00, 0.00,
−0.40]
1 [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 220.70 0.00
16, 7, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; 6, 3, 3, 3,
3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
Note 1: The first three numbers represent the application years of overlays in two digits after year 2000 and the next three numbers the thicknesses
of overlays in centimeters.
Note 2: Convergence index defined in inequality (8).

from being trapped in local optima. Given no substantial
difference in the performance of the two gradient meth-
ods, the steepest descent method is a recommended algo-
rithm to be used with HDM-4. The studies presented in
this article used HDM-4, and a number of runs were man-
ually made, as it is not available in batch mode. If avail-
able, however, the procedure presented in this article
may easily be coded in a computer program that would
require no exogenously specified maintenance options
but compute optimal option as output.
The proposed methodology can readily be generalized
for cases with maintenance options with heterogeneous
works. Also, it seems to be applicable with other what-
if models to find the true optima, making them more
204
NB(k)
Setting 2: high vol
200
190
90 Setting 1: low vol.
80
70
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Fig. 6. OMW-optimized net benefit function, NB(k).
powerful tools for analyzing different management
issues.
Although the results of the case study seem to indicate
that the HDM-4 objective function is unimodal with re-
spect to the variables defining maintenance options, and
therefore the solutions obtained are not dependent on
the assumed initial maintenance options, it is not possi-
ble to prove that is always the case. Also, the number of
iterations to find an optimum with the proposed proce-
dure depends on the closeness of the initially assumed
option to the true optimum. These considerations point
to the importance of the development of a method for
finding a good initial option that well approximates the
optimum. The procedure developed by Tsunokawa and
Schofer (1994) based on an optimal control model ap-
pears to be a promising approach for developing such a
method.
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