A decision support system for flexible pavement treatment selection

The current decision-making process of the Thailand Department of Highways (DOH) for pavement treatment selection is based on the engineering judgment of DOH practitioners, which causes inconsistency and ineffectiveness in treatment selections. In order to address these problems, Thailand Pavement Maintenance Decision Support System (TPMDSS) is developed in this study to help provide an effective guideline for flexible pavement treatment selection. TPMDSS integrates both the database management systems (DBMS) and the treatment decision model. A treatment decision model employs the cause-based strategy, which follows a logical progression by synthesizing relevant pavement-related data to help identify pavement problems and recommend feasible treatments. The main components of TPMDSS are: (1) TPMS inventory module, (2) field inspection module, (3) pavement section analysis module, (4) distress explanation facility, and (5) reporting module. The developed system is verified and validated against the experts judgment and actual test cases.