Prioritization of Pavement Segments Maintenance Using Analytical Hierarchy Process - Case study: Palapye, Botswana

The department of transportation in Botswana has been experiencing maintenance budget fluctuations for many years. The budget fluctuations have caused a negative impact on road maintenance causing increasing risks of accidents for road users. For decades, road maintenance has been carried out based on expert?s judgement without taking into consideration the actual physical condition of the roads. This paper proposes the application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine road maintenance priority. Three criteria and thirteen sub criteria were used whereby eleven (11) experts in the field of highway and traffic engineering were selected as respondents. Sixteen (16) maintenance function groups were identified and a hierarchy structure was developed based on the objectives and function groups. Three road segments were selected as representatives of different road conditions in Palapye. The result shows that, the Overall Relative Weight (ORW) of each alternative in order of their importance is pothole patching with 21%, Base repair 16.7%, pavement overlays 16.4%, signage repair 13.2%, edge repairs 10.1%, road paintings 8.9%, Drainage maintenance 6.6%, and clearing vegetation 6.0%. In addition, the results indicated that Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), provided unbiased ranking of road segments that avoids individual judgements.