| dc.description.abstract | There are more than 23,000 bridges in Taiwan. According to the statistical information from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, most of the bridges are between 20 to 40 years of age. To achieve effective management functions, an evaluation scheme is needed for examining conditions of the bridges. However, since performance of a bridge is significantly influenced by decisions made in its planning, design, construction, and maintenance phases; the evaluation scheme should be extended to cover all the life-cycle phases of the bridge.
This research aims at establishing a bridge evaluation scheme that comprises of a Safety index, a Durability index, and an analysis of life-cycle cost for a bridge. The evaluation scheme is structured to cover the planning, design, construction, and maintenance phases of a bridge. For the Safety and Durability indices, a scale between 0 and 100 can be calculated based on the input data of the bridge at each of the four phases. For the life-cycle cost analysis, the life-cycle costs can be obtained for various alternatives at the planning phase, and the bridge’s life-cycle costs can also be calculated at the later phases.
Based on the established scheme, an automated life-cycle based bridge evaluation system (LCBBES) is developed in this research. LCBBES is able to provide suggestions, obtained from interviewed bridge experts, for the bridge that are rated low in their Safety and Durability indices. LCBBES also allows a user to select a better option among alternatives based on estimated life-cycle costs. LCBBES is planned to be field tested in the near future at agencies which are responsible for performing bridge management functions. | en_US |