Development of a multicriteria matrix for decision making in the management of flexible pavements in an urban road network. Case study the city of Itagüí – Colombia

Decision-making for interventions in urban road networks is often carried out reactively, addressing roads in the worst condition first, which reduces the length of intervention in the entire urban road network under an assigned budget. The objective of this work was to establish a methodology to prioritize the intervention of asphalt pavements on urban roads through a multi-criteria matrix that allows optimizing the management of pavements in the network. The criteria were previously adjusted and validated by road infrastructure experts using the Likert scale. Subsequently a large group of experts completed the multi-criteria matrix to qualify and weigh each of the criteria and intervention alternatives considered to address each of the established problems; the goal is to preserve the urban road network in good condition. With the support of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools, each criterion was represented by a vector shapefile format, each of them was transformed into raster format and reclassified to assign a specific score. The attributes of the raster format used information from the road network of the city of Itagüí (Colombia). The final result was the weighted overlay of maps that allowed establishing the prioritization of the roads to intervene according to the score obtained in each road segment, which allows the administrator to make efficient decisions in an urban network.