An Innovative Approach for Selection of Critical Activities for Maintenance of Rural Road Network

Roads play a very important role in the social and economic development of any country. The failures of low rural roads have been predominant in many developing countries like India, which affect both the road users and the road agencies. Thus, in order to reap the benefits of created assets it is essential to maintain the low volume rural road timely. Rural road network are deteriorating fast due to lack of timely maintenance, leading to higher vehicle operating costs, increasing number of accidents etc. Thus, providing appropriate maintenance treatment at appropriate time, the rate of deterioration can be deferred to a great extent and this will reduce the maintenance cost of huge low volume road network in developing countries like India. Selection of critical activities for maintenance depends on several distress condition such as, structural condition, traffic operational condition, traffic safety condition, road sight condition and drainage condition of the road. However, a critical review of the literature indicated that no such comprehensive methodology is available to select critical maintenance activity for maintenance of low volume road. Thus, the main objective of this study is to develop an innovative approach for identification of critical maintenance activity for sustainable maintenance of low volume road based on component condition index. The study proposes that first activity which are more critical for maintenance and which give maximum outcomes need to be selected first. The approach proposed in this study is illustrated with the help of example of rural roads. Analysis results indicated that the proposed approach is less time consuming simple and cost effective and can be executed with minimal data which can be obtained easily. It is expected that this study will be useful for the road engineers and researcher to identify of critical maintenance activity for sustainable maintenance of low volume road and effective utilization of resources.