OPTIMIZING BUDGET ALLOCATION FOR LOW-VOLUME ROADS THROUGH THE AHP-TOPSIS APPROACH

Abstract

Rural road maintenance prioritization under constrained public budgets requires balancing engineering condition, economic efficiency, and strategic policy objectives. Conventional benefit-cost (B/C) analysis provides an economically grounded framework but may emphasize high-traffic corridors while considering accessibility and regional distribution. This study developed and empirically evaluated an integrated Analytic Hierarchy Process-Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (AHP-TOPSIS) framework to support multi-criteria prioritization of rural road maintenance. Using 724 one-kilometer road sections across eight regional bureaus of Thailand’s Department of Rural Roads, expert-derived criteria weights were obtained through AHP with verified consistency (CR < 0.10) and incorporated into a TOPSIS-based ranking procedure. Comparative validation was conducted against historical allocation practices and conventional B/C prioritization under identical budget constraints. Our results indicate that the AHP-TOPSIS framework achieves comparable aggregate pavement performance, reduces inter-regional variability in post-maintenance International Roughness Index (IRI), and expands total maintenance coverage by 7.4% within the same fiscal envelope. Investment distribution across national strategic categories is more balanced under the multi-criteria framework, reflecting closer alignment with policy goals. These findings demonstrate that structured multi-criteria decision synthesis can provide a transparent and policy-explicit complement to traditional economic evaluation in large-scale rural road maintenance planning.