Multistage optimization of reconstruction sequence of highways

A method to determine the optimal groups of road segments to be simultaneou sly treated during road widening programs is described. This methodology sp ecifically addresses a prioritizing system and the closure strategy conside ring the disutility due to rehabilitation. The dynamic programming methodol ogy is utilized for the optimization procedure where the problem has been f ormulated as a utility maximization problem. The mathematical modeling of t he problem and its solution technique are described. An example is included . The results indicate that the proposed method is useful for multistage op timization problems such as road network planning. The proposed method diff ers from the conventional design method for the determination of reconstruc tion sequence because the closure strategy is simultaneously determined by the multistage optimization.