Multi-Criteria Comparison of Bridge Designs

The selection of a bridge design from among a number of alternatives that meets desired conditions is a complex task. In such projects the stakeholders may have conflicting interests as they represent dissimilar perspectives. It is especially difficult to simultaneously satisfy the diverse engineering, economical, legal and environmental requirements implying both tangible and intangible data of multiple criteria. This paper discusses the methodology and the key activities of the project completion reports of bridge designs. The fundamentals of two well-known methods, a multiple-criteria decision making method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the Kane simulation technique (KSIM) are described. A realistic application of these methods to the evaluation and comparison of three bridges of different types is also presented.