Multi-Criteria Optimization of Bridge Management

Optimizing investment funding levels and combinations of treatment types and timings, as an aid to management decision making, are vital functions of any bridge management system (BMS). Bridge management is always involved the bridge performance assessment which is essentially a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, which involves multiple assessment criteria such as traffic safety enhancement, preservation of bridge condition, protection from extreme events, agency cost minimization and user cost minimization. In this paper, a multi-criteria optimization methodology was developed not only to take due cognizance of costs but also to include a wide range of performance criteria to facilitate balanced decision-support practices in bridge management. The proposed methodology uses the AHP to determine the weights of criteria, linguistic terms to assess bridge performance under each criterion and aggregate bridge performance under different criteria into an overall performance score for each bridge structure. A numerical example illustrated the integrated methodology and the optimization process.