An integrated GIS methodology to assess the impact of engineering maintenance activities: A case study of dredging projects

Abstract

Engineering infrastructures require regular maintenance and/or repair activities that have important social, environmental, and economic impacts. Despite their growing importance, few studies have focused on fully integrated analyses. This work presents a general methodological approach to design databases of engineering maintenance activities for their assessment. This methodology was applied to the case of dredging projects in the ports managed by the Andalusian Regional Government (Spain). The resulting database contains 87 fields of information obtained from the analysis of 70 activities performed between 1993 and 2015. This database is free, public, and available to the scientific community, and it was implemented in PostgreSQL using the PostGIS extension for spatial data; therefore, it can be integrated in a GIS. The assessment of deviations from the initial projects and the comparison between locations enhanced our methodology, which represents a valuable tool not only for scientists and managers to improve the decision-making process when planning future strategies, but also to evaluate the environmental impacts.