21st Century bridge management systems - A new method for ranking competing projects and programs

Abstract

The concepts of depreciation; scheduled maintenance; and scheduled budgeting for the replacement of physical assets are receiving greater attention today amongst transportation agencies in North America and elsewhere around the world. A Bridge Management System (BMS) is an asset management tool of transportation agencies, but it is only a recent acquisition in the tool kit. Indeed some provincial transportation agencies in Canada still don't have an automated BMS. Further, those agencies that already have a BMS are looking for ways to improve the capability of their systems with respect to the number of alternative projects and the length of the programming horizon that the systems can evaluate or accommodate. A major impediment to the processing of more alternatives per bridge and undertaking economic analysis over a longer time horizon is the lengthy computer run time that is involved when the inventory is larger than a few thousands. This paper presents a new method for optimizing bridge projects' selection at both the project and program levels, which takes into account more of the criteria that industry experts have for a while recommended, including costs and benefits to the transportation agency; costs and benefits to the road users; and the risks posed by extreme climate-change events. Above all, the optimization procedure does not involve any iteration and, therefore, will require minimal computer run time. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated with a sample inventory, but it can handle any inventory size, including the 50,000-bridge Texas' DOT inventory.