# Multi-Year Maintenance Planning for Large-Scale Infrastructure Systems: A Novel Network Deep Q-Learning Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18732 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18732/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RL for energy, networks and operations, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 8 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jul 2025.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for energy, networks and operations](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-energy-networks-and-operations/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Value-Decomposition Networks For Cooperative Multi-Agent Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05296/) (2017)
- [Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08839/) (2020)
- [QTRAN: Learning to Factorize with Transformation for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05408/) (2019)
- [FACMAC: Factored Multi-Agent Centralised Policy Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06709/) (2020)
- [Qatten: A General Framework for Cooperative Multiagent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03939/) (2020)
- [Mean-Field Approximation of Cooperative Constrained Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (CMARL)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07437/) (2022)
- [CH-MARL: Constrained Hierarchical Multiagent Reinforcement Learning for Sustainable Maritime Logistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02060/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Infrastructure asset management is essential for sustaining the performance of public infrastructure such as road networks, bridges, and utility networks. Traditional maintenance and rehabilitation planning methods often face scalability and computational challenges, particularly for large-scale networks with thousands of assets under budget constraints. This paper presents a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework that optimizes asset management strategies for large infrastructure networks. By decomposing the network-level Markov Decision Process (MDP) into individual asset-level MDPs while using a unified neural network architecture, the proposed framework reduces computational complexity, improves learning efficiency, and enhances scalability. The framework directly incorporates annual budget constraints through a budget allocation mechanism, ensuring maintenance plans are both optimal and cost-effective. Through a case study on a large-scale pavement network of 68,800 segments, the proposed DRL framework demonstrates significant improvements over traditional methods like Progressive Linear Programming and genetic algorithms, both in efficiency and network performance. This advancement contributes to infrastructure asset management and the broader application of reinforcement learning in complex, large-scale environments.