Levels of Uncertainty in Infrastructure Asset Management

Abstract

The management of infrastructure assets is often challenged by uncertain factors such as changing weather trends and usage patterns. To reliably maintain the assets above a specified level of service, the extent of this uncertainty should be identified, and adequate methods for analyzing the risk factors should be implemented. The analysis of risk is well-defined in the field of strategic management. In the current study, four levels of uncertainty that are widely discussed in strategic management were used as a benchmark to determine the levels of uncertainty in infrastructure asset management. These levels range from known issues, to statistically predictable factors, to complete indeterminacy. The current methods of treating uncertainty in infrastructure asset management were reviewed to determine how they overlap with the four levels of uncertainty and whether or not asset managers handle this uncertainty in an optimal fashion. The current approaches in asset management were found to be primarily deterministic and probabilistic. A shortcoming was found in regard to the incorporation of risk analysis into asset management planning for large-scale networks. The researchers concluded that the level of uncertainty present in asset management at the network planning level can be best described as a range and addressed through the use of representative scenarios within that range.