A Novel Life-Cycle Based Management System for Disaster Mitigation of Bridges

In the past few decades, more attention has been paid to the longevity of infrastructure. The long-term environmental factors such as chloride invasion and carbonation penetration detrimental to concrete make reinforcement corrosion and shorten the service time of bridge structures, giving a gradually decrease of structural performance. Based on our previous study, the relationship between structural performance and service time can be displayed and the time point for maintenance or retrofit when structural performance proceeds below threshold values can be predicted. This paper presents a novel life-cycle based bridge management system (BMS) with extendable structure. In the developed system, a novel technology is known as "Metadata" was adopted to integrate all the bridge inspection records and the evaluation results in the photos on-site. In other words, a single photo capable of storing all the information related to bridge status was created with superimposing the data layers. Therefore, different photos were taken at different time point just become a resume of bridge status. The time history of bridge status considering material deterioration is accordingly able to be recorded and evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. As a result, the purpose of life-cycle-based bridge management can be fulfilled. This technology benefits data mining of inspection and evaluation, the decision making on necessary maintenance efforts for long-term problem of the deteriorated bridge can be done with ease. Also, to identify the seismic behavior of the bridges shortly after the strike of an earthquake, this system has to possess the capability of rapidly estimating the risk of bridge damages caused by an earthquake. By incorporating the analysis of earthquake attenuation relationships and fragility curves, rapid estimation of seismic risk analysis system was established. A seismic risk assessment system, which can instantly estimate and visually demonstrate the level of damage to bridges due to a specific seismic event and the corresponding economic loss due to the damage of bridges, was developed and also served as a reference for seismic retrofitting program of existing bridges. The achievements attained in this study can be helpful for earthquake mitigation strategy in the future.