Applied Decision-Making Framework for Maintenance Scheduling in Bridge Management

Abstract

The deterioration of bridge structures in the United States is a national multibillion-dollar problem. Recent studies and reports show that almost 10% of these bridges need to be repaired or replaced. Therefore, facilitating decision-making for optimal bridge maintenance scheduling is essential for the management of networks of these aging structures where lack of preventative and proactive strategies cause significant consequences. In order to achieve such schedule, analytical methods are required to optimize conflicting factors over the life-cycle of the bridge while considering (i) structural performance and (ii) maintenance cost. An advanced reliability-based decision-making framework for maintenance scheduling of deteriorating bridges is proposed. The outcome is a decision-making framework regarding repair and replacement of the structure over its life-cycle in terms of schedule and type of action to-be-performed on selected components considering system requirements, structure specification, as well as available budget. To implement the proposed framework, and in order to evaluate the performance of the developed methodology, a numerical experiment is developed. The results obtained by applying the methodology on an existing bridge are analyzed and the efficiency and advantages of the procedure are demonstrated. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.