Proposed highway asset management framework with an emphasis on economic impact analysis

In highway asset management, the decision making process as regards the allocation of funding to deficient assets is a very complex one, especially when the competing assets have similar traits. Currently, HERS-ST is one of the tools that many departments of transportation across the nation have adopted for this task. The system is capable of capturing and measuring user, non-user as well as agency benefits generated from investment in highway maintenance projects and as such has aided to some extent in the decision making process. In this study the main goal was to devise a system's framework that would extend the benefits that are currently being measured by systems like HERS-ST. The proposed framework was devised after a thorough study of the underlying concepts and sub-models of a preselected series of economic efficiency analysis and economic development impact analysis tools. The resulting framework is expected to extend the range of economic benefits measured, to job and earning generation, economic development impacts through inter-industry fund transfer as well as resulting inter-modal fund transfer. With the new framework, asset managers will have at hand a more complete tool that is expected to render decision making with respect to allocation of funding to remedial highway projects less complex. Furthermore since economic development impacts will be measured, it might be used by funding agencies as a tool in order to determine whether they need to review their funding policies with respect to allocating more expenses to deficient assets.