Proposal to prioritize the improvement of rural roads based on sustainable criteria

Abstract

In Latin America, rural road construction and improvement programs have been implemented to improve traffic flow and reduce dust, mud, and noise. However, conventional criteria for evaluating public investment do not adequately reflect the needs of rural areas. In these contexts, aspects such as rural-urban integration, access to education and healthcare, environmental protection, and local identity are more relevant than travel times or traffic volumes. Within this framework, a multi-criteria evaluation method is proposed to prioritize rural road improvements that maximize their contribution to sustainable territorial development. The methodology integrates multi-criteria and multi-objective decision-making techniques, optimizing alternatives using the Manhattan distance, and is complemented by a fuzzy cognitive map to analyze the dynamic behavior of the selected solutions. The proposal is applied to a case study in the Araucanía Region of Chile, where fifteen roads are selected from a sample of 101. The analysis considers 16 criteria and 27 indicators associated with the social, environmental, technical, and economic dimensions of sustainability.