Risk Heterogeneity and Directed Primary–Secondary Interactions in Completed Road Infrastructure Projects: A Data-Driven Analysis

Road infrastructure risk management often relies on aggregate rankings that assume stable priorities across projects. This retrospective, document-based study examines between-project differences in risk structure and directed associations between primary and secondary risks within adverse events. The analysis uses 1177 consolidated analytical records of documented cost- and/or time-related adverse events from 28 completed road infrastructure projects implemented during the construction of Pan-European Corridor X and adjacent road infrastructure in Serbia. Primary-risk, secondary-risk, and joint primary–secondary edge profiles were compared using Jensen–Shannon divergence, permutation testing, empirical-Bayes adjustment, and a beta-binomial model. Directed network analysis identified source, receiver, and bridge roles among seven risk groups. Significant heterogeneity was found in all three profile types. At the record level, 69.8% of the 1053 records containing at least one secondary risk included a secondary risk from a different group, whereas at the link level, 53.8% of the 1717 directed group-level link occurrences were cross-group. Project documentation was the dominant source and bridge, generating 59.6% of cross-group links, whereas external factors were the largest receiver and had the highest authority score. The most frequent link, from project documentation to external factors, was not overrepresented after project-specific composition was preserved. Several less frequent links were significantly overrepresented, especially those connecting project-wide factors with employer-related risks. The findings support coordinated preventive planning. The proposed data-driven framework can support the development of digital decision-support systems for project-specific risk monitoring, coordinated preventive planning, and sustainable management of road infrastructure delivery.