A multi-criteria decision-making model using socio-technical attributes for transportation bridge maintenance prioritisation

Abstract

Owing to budget constraints and the significant numbers of deficient bridges in various countries, a systematic approach is needed to more efficiently allocate limited resources to bridge maintenance efforts. It is well known that bridge maintenance is not solely a technical process; rather, it is a socio-technical problem. Therefore, multiple criteria should be considered, making it a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. This study presents an MCDM framework for prioritising bridge maintenance based on five criteria. The criteria are the bridge condition index, delay cost, truck effect, accessibility, and redundancy. Approaches for measuring each criterion have been described. Some variations of computation methods of the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) framework are explored. The results show that if higher-priority bridges fail, they incur higher social costs. Therefore, these bridges should be upgraded to minimise the potential social costs. This study provides a systematic and implementable approach for facilitating bridge maintenance decision-making, without requiring extra data collection efforts.