Trends and potentials in design optimization for road projects

In the practical implementation of road design, engineers must make multiple decisions during the design process, which is often neither formalized nor automated, thereby resulting in a repetitive cycle of design, analysis, and modification processes when designing and constructing road projects. Researchers in the architecture, engineering, and construction domain have explored design optimization from many perspectives. This study presents a systematic review of existing literature on road design optimization, summarizing the status quo of existing studies in terms of optimization disciplines, objectives, and methods. The review highlights that existing research on road design optimization has mainly focused on optimizing traffic network, geometry design, and material performance with certain objectives, using various approaches. Future topics could include optimization methods that integrate more analysis processes from different disciplines and incorporate multidisciplinary expertise into building information modeling (BIM) with parametric representation and rich semantic information. © 2024 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.