COMPARISON OF RURAL ROAD PRIORITISATION BETWEEN STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING (SEM) PROCESS AND ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) TO APPROACH THE SUITABLE AND EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS (Paper 843)

The main form of transport in Thailand logistics is road transport followed by port, rail and air transport respectively. Because of the road structure the most advance so all the road network is connected hence it provides the most convenient than other means of transport. However, the road transport is costly due to higher fuel and labour cost. Therefore, the Thai government has a policy to support multimodal transport as it is a key mechanism in the development of logistics. This research found that the most value of exports and a potential of multimodal transport product is rice, this product is one of the three export products of Thailand. The rice plantations are located in the lower northern and upper central region of Thailand and distributed centre is in Nakhon Sawan which is the major source of market crops. The main transports are by car or rail to the port in Ayutthaya and then transfer to ship to Bangkok Port; Laemchabang Port and Ko Srichang Port, or to Inland Container Depot in Lad Krabang to forward by rails to port for export. However, its ability to connect rice transports have limitations particularly transport of rice from farm to a collection centre. There are many rural roads involved these transports and those rural roads may not have been designed to support the weight of  the cargo which resulted in damaging the roads. Therefore, the Department of Rural Roads has started to improve the efficiency of rural road connectivity to rail and port also managing proper road maintenance to ensure the safety for road users. 
This research applied two methods to collect data and compare these methods to find which one is suitable for the department. First method is Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is to prepare a questionnaire and collect in the area of studies, the information was evaluated on the factors that influence the selection of the roads. Department of Rural Roads then would develop a network of improve the transportation connectivity. The second method is to collect data and analyse using Structural Equation Modelling, SEM, for a summary of factors that influence the selection roads. These two methods were determined the relationship between them with different factors and concluded with the guidelines for a proper analyse and performance. However, in order to analyse the selected roads of the two methods have both advantages and limitations. Such as, the AHP method has the main factors which can be divided into various sub-factors and can be analysed in more detail, however, the analysis in this way based on the assumption that the individual factors are not related to the data used. Moreover, the analysis of expert interviews from which to recruit into those capable of providing information can be very complicated and May affect Understanding of the interviewees. SEM method  has relationship of each factor by factor, the assumption that change of one factor has an impact of changes in other factors both directly and indirectly which can reflect a real operational, however this analysis  can be complicated and require large amounts of data for accurate analysis. This study can be concluded that the project that has many factors closely related to several other factors should be used SEM method analysis which can reflect the real performance. For the AHP analysis is suitable for the project that can be divided into the sub-factors out of several sequences which will be able to determine the importance of each factor and sub-factor throughout.