Simulation-Based Network Maintenance Planning and Scheduling

Lock deterioration in a waterway network requires timely maintenance to maintain navigability and regular lockage service. Locks degrading over time have reduced capacities and increased service times. Because demand responds to service changes, the objective function maximizes the overall net benefits rather than the minimization of costs. To maximize the net benefits, it is important to schedule maintenance that preserves lock conditions above threshold values, provides minimum acceptable service, and reduces the risks of serious failures. With constrained budgets, network-level maintenance can be scheduled over a planning horizon. A waterway model that combines simulation and optimization was developed to allocate maintenance funds and to schedule maintenance tasks optimally. Numerical cases are evaluated by parallel processing. The promising demonstration of simulation-based optimization shows the applicability of the proposed methodology to network-level and component-level maintenance planning and scheduling.