Advanced Decision Support Tools for Bridge Asset Management

Bridge management includes bridge maintenance, operation, replacement, preservation and improvement with a focus on making informative and effective decisions for these activities. The dissertation includes three studies related to bridge management to support decision making.

This dissertation includes an overview of transportation asset management and highlights on bridges condition status in the US. It further provides an overview on the major acts and laws signed into law that involves the use of transportation asset management plans. The dissertation also includes a brief timeline of bridge management in addition to a brief discussion on the use of bridge management systems. The first paper included in this dissertation focuses on exploring the use of Social Network Analysis in measuring bridges’ importance relative to each other and ranking them accordingly. Findings from this study indicated that including bridge connectivity using social network analysis measures has a promising potential in establishing a more comprehensive prioritization system for bridges that incorporates transportation system needs when applied on the bridges on the base highway network (BHN) of the National Highway System (NHS) in Iowa (BHN-NHS). The second paper involved developing a data-driven framework that focuses on selecting variables that would potentially have higher impact over bridge deck time in lower condition ratings and provide more accurate life forecasting models for them. Findings supports that clustering bridges based on impacting factors could help refine forecasting models. This dissertation also conducted a survey to identify guidance needs for the implementation and customization of an analytical software widely licensed across state agencies and offered an approach to be used as an initial step in calculating transition periods for the general condition ratings (GCR) deterioration profile module.