Overview on performance predictive models – Application to bridge management systems

Abstract

Bridge management systems (BMSs) have been developed to assist the bridge asset engineers to determine the optimal cost-effective maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement (MR&R) decisions for bridge networks. The accuracy of these decisions depends significantly on the performance predictive models used to forecast the future condition of infrastructures. The most common performance predictive models used in the BMSs are deterministic and stochastic models. Several limitations in these models have been mentioned by many authors, which leads to a concern about the reliability of these models to effectively define the maintenance strategies. This paper presents an overview of the main performance predictive models that have been applied for infrastructures and recommends the implementation of some of these models in the BMSs.The authors would like to thank ISISE – Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (PEst-C/ECI/UI4029/2011 FCOM-01-0124-FEDER-022681) and FCT – Portuguese Scientific Foundation for the research grant PD/BD/128015/2016 under the PhD program “Innovation in Railway System and Technologies- iRail