How are pavement preservation treatment strategies developed?

Pavement preservation programming involves: (1) Condition assessment - PCI, IRI, distress surveys creating network inventory, (2) Deterioration modeling - predict future condition from current state using Markov chains or deterministic curves, (3) Treatment decision trees - match treatments (crack seal, chip seal, overlay, reconstruction) to condition levels and distress types, (4) Life cycle cost analysis - compare present worth of treatment sequences, (5) Optimization - maximize network condition or minimize cost subject to budget constraints. Pavement management systems (PMS) integrate these functions. Key is applying right treatment at right time before major deterioration.