Development of Distress Index Prediction Models for Rehabilitation Treatments in Louisiana Using Advanced Machine Learning Techniques

Performance prediction models are used by state agencies to predict future trends in distress indices, hence, determining the required maintenance and/or rehabilitation treatment as well as the deterioration rate and remaining pavement service life. However, most of these models are based on a limited number of parameters and cannot predict the performance distress indices reliably. Such limitation resulted in having, most of the time, a maximum prediction period of five years. As a solution and coping with the ever-increasing size of pavement data, machine learning techniques have become a promising alternative. The objective of this study was to develop a machine-learning-based framework for states with a hot and humid climate that can predict the long-term field performance (for 11 years) of their asphalt (AC) overlays based on their key project conditions. Two machine learning algorithms were examined, namely Random Forest (RF) and CatBoost, and the one yielding a higher accuracy was considered. In this study, the well-known pavement condition index (PCI) was used as the pavement performance indicator. A total of 892 log miles of AC overlay data were obtained from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD) Pavement Management System (PMS) database.  Based on the collected data, six models were trained (for each algorithm) and validated to predict the future PCI of AC overlays for up to 11 years. Results indicated that the RF algorithm yielded higher accuracy than the CatBoost Algorithm and thus the RF-based models were considered in the proposed decision-making framework.