Sustainability-Informed Bridge Ranking under Scour Based on Transportation Network Performance and Multiattribute Utility

Abstract

Flooding and the resultant scour damage to bridges may lead to immense economic losses and significant social and environmental impacts. Currently, bridge management decisions are developed on a bridge-by-bridge basis to prevent bridge failure due to scour, i.e., these decisions are made irrespective of other bridges in the regional transportation network. Because bridge managers are often responsible for the management of several bridge networks, it is essential to develop a framework that considers the bridge performance at the network level to aid making rational bridge management strategies. Furthermore, the economic, social, and environmental impacts dictate the need to develop a sustainability-informed bridge management framework at the network level. The objective of this paper is to develop a sustainability-informed bridge ranking approach for a network of bridges vulnerable to scour using multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) and transportation network analysis. The individual performance of bridges and the impact of bridge failure on the network are systematically integrated into the proposed sustainability assessment methodology. The proposed utility-based approach is applied to an existing highway bridge network located in Camden County, New Jersey. It is shown that the proposed approach can provide an important guideline to bridge managers to prioritize their intervention actions for scour protection/prevention.