development of a pavement overall deterioration index (case study: iran)

The main core of pavement management systems is pavement evaluation. a more sophisticated index is essential to evaluate a pavement so that authorities can optimize budget allocation for maintenance and rehabilitation activities. several single and combined indices have been applied to assess pavement conditions in developed countries based on a comprehensive pavement condition database. however, in developing countries, the lack of an extensive pavement condition database leads to insufficient attempts on developing such an index. as a result, the budget cannot be assigned appropriately on pavement preservations. this research aims to develop a combined pavement condition index using the weighted summation of the pavement condition index, international roughness index, and central deflection of falling weight deflectometer testing device. the weights are attained through the application of the analytical hierarchy process via a questionnaire completed by a panel of experts. the data captured from the questionnaire was entered into the expert choice software. results indicate that the central deflection as a representative of structural adequacy of pavement has the highest weight (0.491). the other indices were ranked as the second and third criteria in evaluating the pavement performance with the weights of 0.291 and 0.218, respectively, which make logical and engineering sense over the case study. the combined index would express the overall condition of pavement which could be applied in pavement maintenance planning.