Benefit-cost analysis of maintenance decision support system

Abstract

The pooled fund study of the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS), led by South Dakota and now including 13 state departments of transportation, developed an operational MDSS for winter maintenance. While the MDSS is generally perceived to be beneficial, it is important to determine more formally the tangible benefits and costs associated with its implementation and to determine whether it is a good investment. This paper presents the results of a benefit-cost analysis of the pooled fund MDSS. The development of the analysis method includes the identification of benefits and costs, the definition of base case and alternatives, and the development of a benefit-cost model. A base case (without MDSS) and two other alternatives (with MDSS) are defined for the analysis. The developed method consists of two parallel modules: a baseline data module and a simulation module. Results from a case study applying this method show that the implementation of MDSS brings more benefits than costs.