Artificial intelligence-based rural road maintenance management assessment system

An analytical hierarchy process (AHP)-based three-level assessment system (including target, criterion, and index) was established to cover all elements relevant to rural road maintenance management. This paper applies the artificial intelligence (AI)-based fuzzy neural network approach to the rural road maintenance management evaluation to handle problems related to knowledge acquirement and accumulation that is essential to comprehensive evaluation. Modular design, coupled with fuzzy theory and the neural network approach, was employed to tentatively develop a rural road maintenance management assessment model with built-in expert knowledge. Indexes in this model are initially fuzzified according to fuzzy theory, then analyzed in the multi-layer neural network, and conversely defuzzified to produce data that support and finalize the rural road maintenance management assessment. An example was given to illustrate the working mechanism of this assessment system, and to prove the feasibility and validity of the fuzzy neural network-based assessment model.