European Journal of Scientific Research

ISSN 1450-216X Vol.35 No.1 (2009), pp 121-129

© EuroJournals Publishing, Inc. 2009
http://www.eurojournals.com/ejsr.htm

Development of Expert System for Airport Pavement

Maintenance and Rehabilitation

Norlela Ismail
Department of Civil and Structure Engineering/Sustainable Urban Transport Research Centre
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
E-mail: norlelaismail@uniten.edu.my; norisdpp@yahoo.com

Amiruddin Ismail
Department of Civil and Structure Engineering/Sustainable Urban Transport Research Centre
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
E-mail: abim@vlsi.eng.ukm.my

Riza Atiq O.K. Rahmat

Department of Civil and Structure Engineering/Sustainable Urban Transport Research Centre
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
E-mail: riza@vlsi.eng.ukm.my

Abstract

Airport networks become one of the important assets in a country that constitute an
enormous investment of public funds. For a good return in the investment, the networks
need to be sustained and maintained in an adequate condition by employing the most cost
effective method of maintenance and rehabilitation. This required not only financially but
particularly in term of human resources and expertise in considering the decisions. Expert
system is perhaps the most beneficial application for engineers and decision makers as it
emulate human expertise and judgment through the use of symbolic logic and heuristics for
determination of solution strategies and solutions. A protype development expert system in
flexible airport pavemenrt maintenance and rehabilitation based on KAPPA-PC program
package has been introduced in this study. The knowledge acquisition in developing the
system shall consist of several modules that involved interviews with the domain expert
and literature review from various textures. This expert system is developed to help in
identifying the distress associated with airport pavements and structures, diagnosing the
cause of deterioration, recommending the rehabilitation treatment, and providing
information on costing.

Keywords: Expert system, pavement management, airport pavement

Development of Expert System for Airport Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation 122

1. Introduction
Airport networks are one of the important assets in a country especially after the air travel has become
increasingly popular as a mode of transportation. Large investments in time and money are required by
aviation agency to sustain the maintenance and rehabilitation program. Airport pavements need to be
constantly maintained, repaired, and upgraded in order to ensure the smooth airport operations and
sustain the pavements in an adequate condition. Early detection and repair of airport pavement defect
seems to be the most important method in preventive maintenance (FAA 2003). Failure to perform
restoration treatment in a timely manner may result in an increase in rehabilitation costs due to
accelerated pavement distress. It may also increase the possibility of aircraft accident or aircraft
operation delayed which caused unnecessary discomfort of airport users. However, stringent budgetary
constraint combined with continuously deterioration of pavement structures over time due to
environmental factors and increasing traffic loads is a highly complex problem to aviation agency. The
introduction of heavy airport traffic such as A380 also makes the airport pavement difficult to plan and
carry out pavement preservation and repair project.
For a good return in the investment, it is critical to employ the most cost effective method of
maintenance and repair. The selection of feasible rehabilitation strategies involves a great deal of
knowledge about the condition of the assets, effectiveness of the corrective strategies, and impact of the
action on the system performance. Some of these aspects could be solved deterministically and the others
must be solved heuristically. The heuristic knowledge is possessed by a limited number of pavement
engineering specialists, who use their knowledge, judgment and experience to make interferences and reach
design and investment decisions. These experts are seldom found in local agencies and their necessary
knowledge in diagnosis the pavement distress and determining the proper treatments is difficult to pass on
to the less experienced engineers. As they are retiring, the knowledge and experience may be lost. So, it is
necessary to captured as much as possible of the knowledge, experience and thought process used by
airport pavement engineering experts for the benefit of inexperience engineers.
New technologies applicable to pavement management and maintenance are continually
evolving and expert systems seem the most common technology used to substitute for human
expertise. Expert systems have been the first artificial intelligent technique to be applied to pavement
management. They are powerful tools that able to embody the knowledge, experience, and judgment of
expert pavement engineer by first identifying a main feasible rehabilitation approach and to provide the
local engineering user with an interactive analysis and design tool for development of pavement
rehabilitation strategies (Sundin et al. 2001). Expert systems are receiving greater attention from
organizations because of their ability to enhance productivity and to aid in the decision making process
especially when human experts are becoming increasingly difficult to find and retain together with the
reduction in pavement budgets. Advances in computer hardware technology and software development
for data-gathering method have also made the application of expert systems in the area of pavement
rehabilitation grows rapidly.
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the prototype development of such knowledge-based or
expert system for analysis and design of maintenance and rehabilitation strategies for flexible airport
pavement using KAPPA-PC expert system shell.

2. Application of Expert System in Airport Pavement Management

Expert systems, also known as knowledge-based systems are computerized advisory program that
imitate the reasoning process and desicion-making skills of human experts when solving specific
problem in narrow domain (Sundin et al. 2001). They are among the most active reseach area in
artificial intelligent (AI) which have several distinct advantages compared to convetional computer
program or human expertise. Expert systems able to separate the domain knowledge and the inference,
manipulate the symbolic knowledge, represent process and knowledge transparently, and emulate
human expertise and judgement through the use of heuristics and compiled human experience (Ritchie
1987). Their advantages over human expertise are that they are permanent, easy to transfer, easy to
123 Norlela Ismail, Amiruddin Ismail and Riza Atiq O.K. Rahmat

document, consistent and affordable, whearas human expertise is perishable, difficult to transfer,
difficult to document, unpredictable and expensive (Kaplan 1984).
The application of expert systems in pavement management area especially to diagnostics,
repair and rehabilitation activities is perhaps the most beneficial application for engineers and decision
makers. According to Kaetzel and Clifton (1991) expert systems can assist the engineer in identifying
the distress associated with pavements and structures, diagnosing the cause of deterioration,
recommending different repair and rehabilitation strategies, and provides information for budgeting,
planning and life-cycle-cost.
A summary of several expert systems that have been developed to solve problems in the
pavement management area is presented in Table 1. Although the application of the expert systems has
been existence since 1980s, most of them are for highway networks (Norlela et al 2009). Until
recently, PAVER and AIRPACS are two expert systems that are applicable to airport network. PAVER
has been widely used in managing both flexible and rigid airport pavement. It utilizes the pavement
condition index (PCI) survey and rating procedure to obtain information to draw conclusion and make
recommendation on the maintenance and rehabilitation requirements. For flexible airport pavement,
PAVER considered sixteen types of surface distresses (alligator cracking, block cracking, depression,
joint reflection cracking, oil spillage, polished aggregate, rutting, slippage cracking, bleeding,
corrugation, jet blast erosion, longitudinal and transverse cracking, patching, raveling/weathering,
shoving, and swell) and for rigid airport pavement, it considered fifteen types of pavement distresses
(blow-up, linear cracking, longitudinal/transverse/diagonal cracking, patching, pumping, settlement,
shrinkage cracks, spalling corner, corner break, durability cracking, popouts, scaling, shattered slab,
spalling joint, and joint seal damage). PAVER classified the M&R strategy into three groups: routine
maintenance, major maintenance, and rehabilitation. This system is written in conventional computer
program language, which is difficult to update.
AIRPACS is developed to solve design problem in rigid airport pavement particularly on
jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP). The knowledge-base addressed the three different components
of system including the runways, taxiway, and aprons. This system uses the knowledge and experience
of planners, constructors, airfield managers, and designers to evaluate difficult problems related to
rehabilitation of the airfield system components. It considered functional, structural, operational, and
safety aspects of the airport systems in determining the treatment strategies recommendation. The
treatment strategies are compared using life-cycle cost method which uses the annualized cost as the
economic criterion. AIRPACS uses mechanistic, heuristic, and empirical design method to select the
new treatment layer thicknesses and joint spacing requirements. For the pavement surface evaluation,
AIRPACS considered fifteen types of surface distresses that are similar as PAVER.
Development of Expert System for Airport Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation 124
Table 1: Summary of Expert System Application in Pavement Management

Expert Facility Pavement Development Number of

Reference Hardware
System Use Type Tools Rules
ROSE Hajek et al. 1987 Highway Flexible EXSYS IBM-PC 360
SCEPTRE Ritchie et al. 1987 Highway Flexible EXSYS IBM-PC 140
PERSERVER Haas et al. 1989 Highway Flexible OPSS Mainframe Not available
French Shell
ERASME Allez et al. 1988 Highway Flexible Insight2+ Expert IBM-PC 210
System Shell
EXPEAR Hall et al. 1989 Highway Rigid SAVOIR IBM-PC Not available
PAVEMENT Al-Shawi et al.
Highway Rigid Not available IBM-PC Not available
EXPERT 1989
PARES Ross et al. 1990 Highway Flexible Not available Not available 278
Shahin and Walther Highway
PAVER Flexible Rigid Mainframe IBM-PC Not available
1990 Airfield
Seiler 1990 Seiler
AIRPACS Airfield Rigid Not available Not available Not available
et al .1991
EXSYS 170
Professional IBM-PC (EXSYS)
PMAS Hanna 1994 Highway Flexible Rigid
Instant Expert Macintosh 225 (Instant
Plus Expert)
DeCabooter et al.
PMDSS Highway Flexible Not available IBM-PC 1200
1994

3. Airport Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation Design

According to Ritchie (1987), the analysis and design of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation
(M&R) is generally comprises of four interrelated tasks: (i) surface condition evaluation (ii) analysis
and evaluation of structural adequacy (iii) design of alternative strategies and (iv) selection of
“optimal” strategy.

3.1. Surface Condition Evaluation

Pavement surface or functional condition evaluation is one of the important functions in most
pavement management. It provides valuable and necessary information for both project-level pavement
maintenance and rehabilitation decision-making and overall pavement management. For the
management of airport networks, the evaluation procedure of pavement functional condition should be
based on the analysis of the potential for foreign object damage (FOD) to aircrafts, roughness (ride
quality), skid resistance (safety) and surface distress (Shahin 1982, Ritchie 1987, and Haas 1997). Ride
quality of a pavement is addressed through measurement of surface roughness, safety is measured
through surface friction, surface distress is through the visual condition assessment (type, severity, and
quantity), and FOD is determined by considering only the distresses or severity levels capable of
producing FOD. These measurements are expressed in the form of a quality index which sometimes
needs to be based on judgment. According to Michael et al. (1998), most aviation agencies uses
pavement condition index (PCI) that rate the pavement from 0 (failed) to 100 (excellent) to estimate
the condition of the pavement.
Ritchie (1987) stated that the evaluation of a pavement’s surface condition enables to make a
judgment on the adequacy of existing pavement for current services, determine the need for structural
evaluation, establish the probable cause of surface distress, estimate the needs and priorities of
maintenance and rehabilitation, and develop temporal performance trends for different pavement types
and design under various traffic and environmental condition in order to predict the approximate time
for scheduling future work.
125 Norlela Ismail, Amiruddin Ismail and Riza Atiq O.K. Rahmat

3.2. Structural Adequacy Evaluation

Structural capacity is defined as the ability of a pavement to support traffic without developing
appreciable structural distress (The Asphalt Institute 1977) or in other word, the load carrying capacity
of a pavement. It depends on proper construction with suitable materials and enough thickness to
prevent traffic from overstressing the subgrade or any layer of the pavement structure. The purpose of
the structural evaluation is to determine the allowable load of a pavement, to predict the pavement
future service life with respect to the traffic using it, and to assess the strength of the existing pavement
(Witczak 1978). For most of aviation agency, ratio of Aircraft Classification Number to Pavement
Classification Number (ACN/PCN) system is used to report the pavement load-carrying capacity.
When the pavement is found to be inadequate, structural analysis and evaluation forms a basis
for designing the improvement needed to provide service for selected design period. The methods
reflect the design techniques must be tempered with considerable professional judgment. The
movement of traffic type is used along with structural condition to determine the pavement structural
capacity and predict the remaining life. The number of operation and type of aircraft using the
pavement is also used when analyzing possible cause of deterioration and considering the M&R
strategies.

3.3. Selection of Alternative Strategies

Appropriate M&R activities are selected for each pavement based on current and predicted condition
of the pavement sections. This prediction is based on field and laboratory data, the knowledge and
expertise of the organization staff and research. They can be either deterministic or probabilistic
(Michael et al. 1998). The deterministic models predict single number (i.e. remaining life, level of
distress, whatever measure condition) of a pavement. The probabilistic, on the other hand, predict a
distribution of such events, thus describing the different possible future conditions as the outcomes of a
stochastic process.
In order to maintain and improve the pavement structure, it is necessary for the pavement
engineers to establish a program of action to be performed in the next planning period and action plan
for future M&R. Through this program, the managing agency is able to determine when a pavement
should be rehabilitated and what treatment or action should be performed. This program is based on
engineering judgment, life cost analysis, dynamic programming and experimental version of expert
system (Michael et al. 1998)
Expert judgment, knowledge, and experience are clearly playing a very important role in
developing effective M&R strategy. The determination of the best M&R strategy especially for a large
pavement network involves a great deal of knowledge about the condition of the assets, effectiveness
of the corrective strategies, and impact of the action on the system performance.

4. Proposed Expert System Design

4.1. Knowledge Base
In the development of the proposed expert system for flexible airport pavement maintenance and
rehabilitation, the knowledge-base shall be acquired from various documented publications as well as
observation and experience of expertise in the field of airport pavement which involved interview with
expert domain. The knowledge base in this study shall consist of several modules: functional
evaluation module, structural evaluation module, traffic mix module, maintenance and rehabilitation
module, and cost module. The details of these modules are illustrated in Table 2.
Development of Expert System for Airport Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation 126
Table 2: Modules of Proposed Expert System

Module Function
This module analyses the condition of pavement surface based on field measurements
relating to four major performance indicators: roughness (ride quality), skid resistance
Functional Evaluation
(safety), surface distress (type, severity, and quantity, and potential for foreign object
damage (FOD) to aircrafts.
This module determines the allowable load carrying capacity of a pavement, predicts the
Structural Evaluation pavement future service life with respect to the traffic using it, and assesses the strength of
the existing pavement.
The movement of traffic type is used along with structural condition to determine the
pavement structural capacity and predict the remaining life. The number of operation and
Traffic Mix Analysis
type of aircraft using the pavement is also used when analyzing possible cause of
deterioration and considering the M&R strategies.
This module is used to design pavements, to select rehabilitation alternatives with least cost
M&R Analysis to meet expected traffic and climate condition, to perform life-cycle cost analysis, and to
determine the best time to perform each M&R.
Cost This module incorporates the unit costs of all maintenance activities.

4.2. Prototype development

The knowledge acquisition will be transfer and transform into an expert system computer programmed.
Prototype developments enable testing and refining the concept of a system. In this development
process, the knowledge base should consist of rules and facts that are captured from knowledge,
opinion, and experiences of experts. The knowledge base defines the knowledge presentation scheme
which determines the relationship between rules and facts. IF-THEN rules are common way to
represent knowledge in expert system where IF clause presents premises or condition and THEN
clause present conclusions. IF-THEN rules in expert system can be modified easily to meet changing
needs.

4.3. Development tools

KAPPA-PC expert system shell is used in this study to develop prototype which contains components
such as inference engine, programmed control mechanisms for managing knowledge base, facilities for
explaining on how and why the conclusion is reached, and capabilities for storing and editing
knowledge bases. KAPPA-PC is selected because it offered the advantages of ease of manipulation and
increase productivity besides suitable to use in limited time and has substantial object capabilities
(Basri 1999). This software package is also very attractive with highly graphic display (Mohamed and
Mohamed Hussaini, 1999). The knowledge representation in KAPPA-PC involve rule based, frame
based and object oriented. Moreover, KAPPA-PC is also chosen because of its proven reliability and
can be perform by both forward and backward chaining reasoning.

5. Expected Result
The output result in this proposed development of prototype expert system for airport pavement
maintenance and rehabilitation is expected to identify the distress associated with pavements and
structures, diagnose the cause of deterioration, predict pavement performance, give recommendation in
maintenance and rehabilitation strategies based on airport pavement distress evaluation, detail design
of the overlay rehabilitation strategies, and establish unit cost for various M&R activities. Figure 1
shows the summary of expected results of each module.
127 Norlela Ismail, Amiruddin Ismail and Riza Atiq O.K. Rahmat
Figure 1: Expected Result in Prototype Expert System

 
FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURAL TRAFFIC MIX
  EVALUATION EVALUATION ANALYSIS
MODULE MODULE MODULE
 
• distress associated with • load carrying capacity or • equivalent standard
  pavements and structures pavement classification aircraft coverage
• cause of deterioration number (PCN) • aircraft classification
  • current and future PCI • structural remaining life number (ACN)
• pavement performance  • time to structural failure
 

  MAINTENANCE AND REHABILITATION

(M&R) ANALYSIS MODULE
 
• Recommendation on M&R strategy
  • Time suitable to implement and construct
the M&R strategy
  • predict PCI after every M&R activity

  COST MODULE

 
• total cost and benefit with
and without recommend
  M&R application

6. Conclusions
As one of the important assets in a country, airport networks need to be sustained and maintained in an
adequate condition. Expert systems are perhaps the most beneficial application for engineers and
decision makers as they emulate human expertise and judgment in finding strategies for providing and
maintaining pavements in a serviceable and safe condition at the most possible cost effective way. The
objective of this study is to develop an expert system in flexible airport pavemenrt maintenance and
rehabilitation based on KAPPA-PC program package. The knowledge acquisition in developing the
system shall consist of several modules that involved interviews with the domain expert and literature
review from various textures. This system is expected to give advices in detecting airport pavement
distresses, diagnosing the cause of deterioration, and recommending the rehabilitation treatment
together with the costing information.
Development of Expert System for Airport Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation 128

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