Int J Performability Eng ›› 2021, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (4): 333-342.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.21.04.p1.333342

• Original article •     Next Articles

EM Approach for Weibull Analysis in a Strongly Censored Data Context - Application to Road Markings

Redondin Maximea, Bouillaut Laurentb,*(), and Daucher Dimitric   

  1. a VEDECOM Institute, 23 Allée Bis Des Marronniers, Versailles, 78000, France
    b COSYS/GRETTIA, Université Gustave Eiffel, Marne-la-Vallée, 77447, France
    c COSYS/PICSL, Université Gustave Eiffel, Marne-la-Vallée, 77447, France
  • Contact: Bouillaut Laurent E-mail:laurent.bouillaut@univ-eiffel.fr

Abstract:

Road surface markings organize road traffic and therefore play a major role in road safety. This is one reason why a part of the current guidance system is to model traffic lanes based on pavement marking detection. Consequently, road managers must guarantee detectable marking lines. An adapted maintenance strategy is a potential solution. Today, marking lines are inspected periodically. A direct consequence of this is that the failure moment of a given marking is generally strongly censored (left, interval or right). Sathyanarayanan et al.present the first Weibull approach for road markings [1]. Weibull distributions are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method adapted to this censored problem. The MLE is computed by a numerical approach such as the Newton-Raphson algorithm. In the context of interval-censored data, Pradhan and Kundu proposed an alternative method based on an Expectation-Maximisation EM algorithm [2]. This paper proposes replacing this EM approach in the road markings context. A case study regarding the broken center line of a section of French National Road 4 illustrates this methodology. Lifetime markings are distributed by the Weibull distribution.

Key words: reliability analysis, pavement marking, retroreflection, EM algorithm, maximum likelihood estimator, censor, Weibull distribution