BRIDGE MANAGEMENT BASED ON LIFETIME RELIABILITY AND WHOLE LIFE COSTING: THE NEXT GENERATION

The next generation of bridge management systems has to use powerful reliability, optimization, and life-cycle engineering tools to predict the performance of bridges and the costs associated with bridge interventions including both agency and user costs, to find the optimal lifetime strategy based on benefit/cost methodologies, to implement this strategy at both network and project levels, and to update the optimal strategy as more information becomes available. This paper describes those portions of the current effort which have direct bearing on the bridge performance prediction from the viewpoint of a reliability approach and on the integration of whole life costing with lifetime reliability. A particular emphasis is placed upon reliability-based bridge management. Examples of solutions for reliability-based bridge performance predictions and benefit/cost analyses are presented. For the covering abstract see ITRD E106406.