A New Approach to Bridge Infrastructure Management

Abstract: The maintenance of bridges as a key element in transportation infrastructure has become a major concern due to increasing traffic volumes, deterioration of existing bridges and well-publicised bridge failures. The main goal of this study is to develop a requirement-driven decision support methodology for remediation of concrete bridges within acceptable limits of safety, serviceability and sustainability. The proposed model includes two phases: Phase one is focused on condition assessment and priority ranking of bridge projects which makes use of an integrated priority index addressing a variety of factors. Phase two includes a multi criteria decision making technique which is able to select the best remediation strategy at both project and network level. The modified Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) is used as a decision analysis tool that employs the eigenvector approach of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for criteria weighting. Citation: Rashidi, M., Gibson, P. & Ho, T.K. (2014). A New Approach to Bridge Infrastructure Management. In: Campbell P. and Perez P. (Eds), Proceedings of the International Symposium of Next Generation Infrastructure, 1-4 October 2013, SMART Infrastructure Facility, University of Wollongong, Australia.