Comparative Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Proposed Pavement Evaluation Approach and Traditional Techniques at Cairo Airport, Egypt

Abstract

Cairo International Airport, located in Cairo, Egypt, is the second busiest airport in Africa, serving more than 16 million passengers and 69739 aircraft movements in 2016. Cairo Airport includes three Runways. Runway 05C-23C One of the crucial runways in the airport serves the maximum air traffic equal to 45383 aircraft movements.

In 2016, there was a noticeable rapid deterioration in the pavement condition of the 05C-23C runway due to the significant ageing of the pavement layer; the government decided to choose the traditional method for rehabilitation, which involves a long-term rehabilitation strategy lasting up to 14 years with minimal maintenance during only emergencies.

Deep investigations were conducted to choose the best rehabilitation or maintenance strategy due to life cycle cost analysis using AirCost LCCA software. This research identifies that the new proposed approach is more cost-effective, being on average 470% and 290% cheaper than the traditional methods (Governmental System and Experts System), respectively, in terms of Net Present Value (NPV) and Equivalent Uniform Annual Cost (EUAC), using both deterministic and probabilistic methods. Moreover, the traditional method is not economical, as user costs constitute 48.68%, 65.31%, and 49.52% of agency costs. Additionally, the traditional method incurs significantly higher agency costs than other methods, based on NPV and EUAC analyses.