ST-ResGAT: Explainable Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network for Road Condition Prediction and Priority-Driven Maintenance

Climate-vulnerable road networks require a paradigm shift from reactive, fix-on-failure repairs to predictive, decision-ready maintenance. This paper introduces ST-ResGAT, a novel Spatio-Temporal Residual Graph Attention Network that fuses residual graph-attention encoding with GRU temporal aggregation to forecast pavement deterioration. Engineered for resource-constrained deployment, the framework translates continuous Pavement Condition Index (PCI) forecasts directly into the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM)-compliant maintenance priorities. Using a real-world inspection dataset of 750 segments in Sylhet, Bangladesh (2021-2024), ST-ResGAT significantly outperforms traditional non-spatial machine learning baselines, achieving exceptional predictive fidelity (R2 = 0.93, RMSE = 2.72). Crucially, ablation testing confirmed the mathematical necessity of modeling topological neighbor effects, proving that structural decay acts as a spatial contagion. Uniquely, we integrate GNNExplainer to unbox the model, demonstrating that its learned priorities align perfectly with established physical engineering theory. Furthermore, we quantify classification safety: achieving 85.5% exact ASTM class agreement and 100% adjacent-class containment, ensuring bounded, engineer-safe predictions. To connect model outputs to policy, we generate localized longitudinal maintenance profiles, perform climate stress-testing, and derive Pareto sustainability frontiers. ST-ResGAT therefore offers a practical, explainable, and sustainable blueprint for intelligent infrastructure management in high-risk, low-resource geological settings.