Infrastructure Asset Management Research Articles

Chemical analysis for asset management of concrete infrastructure

The effective management of reinforced-concrete assets through the asset life cycle requires that they are designed and specified to provide an appropriate level of durability for their intended service life and conditions, constructed to fulfil the requirements of the designer and subsequently maintained efficiently in a fully serviceable condition. A confident understanding of the properties, performance and current condition of the concrete materials used in construction is fundamental to each stage of this process. This understanding is, in no small part, reliant on the accuracy and reliability of the laboratory techniques available for analysing hardened concrete. In co-operation with 11 testing companies, The Concrete Society undertook a laboratory trial of BS 1881-124: Chemical analysis methods for hardened concrete. The trial findings were published in 2014 in the second edition of Concrete Society Technical Report 32, Analysis of Hardened Concrete: a Guide to Test Procedures and Interpretation of Results. The trial findings have cast significant doubt on the accuracy of test methods that are routinely used during condition investigations of concrete structures. This paper examines the implications for design, maintenance and asset management of the UK concrete infrastructure asset stock.

Implementing tactical plans to improve water-energy loss management

Water utilities are aware of the water-energy loss relevance in supply systems. However, they still mainly focus on daily water loss control (real and apparent losses), without considering the impact on embedded energy. Moreover, they are mostly concerned with the economic dimension and, in most cases, tend to disregard the impact that water-energy loss may have on the quality of service, communication with the consumers, social awareness, water quality and environment. This paper focuses on the application of the developed and tested AWARE-P infrastructure asset management (IAM) methodology to improve water-energy loss management in water supply systems, while demonstrating the main benefits from implementing an integrated approach for water losses and related energy assessment. Results show that indeed the participating iPerdas utilities were able to define tactical measures leading to a more efficient and sustainable service.

Energy harvesting from electrospun piezoelectric nanofibers for structural health monitoring of a cable-stayed bridge

Wireless monitoring could greatly impact the fields of structural health assessment and infrastructure asset management. A common problem to be tackled in wireless networks is the electric power supply, which is typically provided by batteries replaced periodically. A promising remedy for this issue would be to harvest ambient energy. Within this framework, the present paper proposes to harvest ambient-induced vibrations of bridge structures using a new class of piezoelectric textiles. The considered case study is an existing cable-stayed bridge located in Italy along a high-speed road that connects Rome and Naples, for which a recent monitoring campaign has allowed to record the dynamic responses of deck and cables. Vibration measurements have been first elaborated to provide a comprehensive dynamic assessment of this infrastructure. In order to enhance the electric energy that can be converted from ambient vibrations, the considered energy harvester exploits a power generator built using arrays of electrospun piezoelectric nanofibers. A finite element analysis is performed to demonstrate that such power generator is able to provide higher energy levels from recorded dynamic loading time histories than a standard piezoelectric energy harvester. Its feasibility for bridge health monitoring applications is finally discussed.

Innovation results of IAM planning in urban water services.

The requirement to provide urban water services continuously while infrastructures are ageing, imposes the need for increasingly sustainable infrastructure asset management (IAM). To achieve and maintain adequate levels of service, the AWARE-P IAM methodology has been applied in collaborative projects launched by the National Civil Engineering Laboratory, in partnership with IST (Technical University of Lisbon), Addition (software company) and several water utilities. The objective of these projects is to support urban water utilities in the development, implementation and maintenance of IAM plans. To guarantee the success of IAM planning, following the AWARE-P IAM methodology, utilities are required to: consider that the infrastructure has system behaviour and lifespan is indefinite and guarantee the full-alignment of IAM planning with organisation objectives. By analysing the strategic and tactical plans of participating utilities, the proposed methodology principles are discussed and supported. The main innovation results from the implementation of IAM planning are also presented and discussed, including the challenges of setting up an IAM process, together with the major benefits and drawbacks that come up when developing IAM plans. The results were demonstrated by the effective implementation of 16 strategic and 14 tactical IAM plans by the participating utilities.

Infrastructure development and asset management

Infrastructure, a nation's investment in providing the basic facilities and services to its citizens, often overlooked by them until a bridge collapses, a major highway is closed for repairs or drinking water is shut off because of a break in a 100 year old underground main. Adequate funding for the capital investment in infrastructure is frequently given short shift in a nation's annual budget because there always seems to be a more pressing need to deal with other priorities. However time and time again, deferred funding for highway, bridges and tunnels, both new and existing, has been proven to be costly. These forms of infrastructure play a major role in the economic health of the nation they serve. The smooth and swift flow of goods and services is what business, industry and the populace need to keep healthy and prosperous.

A review of recent research advances on structural health monitoring in Western Australia

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has been attracting numerous research efforts around the world because it targets at monitoring structural conditions and performance to prevent catastrophic failure, and to provide quantitative data for engineers and infrastructure owners to design a reliable and economical asset management strategy. In the past decade, with supports from Australian Research Council (ARC), Cooperative Research Center for Infrastructure and Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM), CSIRO and industry partners, intensive research works have been conducted in the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Western Australia and Centre for Infrastructural Monitoring and Protection, Curtin University on various techniques of SHM. The researches include the development of hardware, software and various algorithms, such as various signal processing techniques for operational modal analysis, modal analysis toolbox, non-model based methods for assessing the shear connection in composite bridges and identifying the free spanning and supports conditions of pipelines, vibration based structural damage identification and model updating approaches considering uncertainty and noise effects, structural identification under moving loads, guided wave propagation technique for detecting debonding damage, and relative displacement sensors for SHM in composite and steel truss bridges. This paper aims at summarizing and reviewing the recent research advances on SHM of civil infrastructure in Western Australia.

Automated processing of large point clouds for structural health monitoring of masonry arch bridges

Abstract Laser scanning technology is gaining popularity in a wide range of applications due to the increasing accuracy and speed at which data can be collected and an increase in laser scan data processing tools. Nevertheless, manual operations for specific applications are time consuming and can require high-performance computers to produce suitable models for further operations. Thus, laser scan data are underused in the civil engineering community. New procedures that automate the data processing for specific but repetitive infrastructure typologies are required to make full use of the technology as a basic tool for infrastructure assessment and asset management. This paper presents a new method for fully automated point cloud segmentation of masonry arch bridges. The method efficiently creates segmented, spatially related and organized point clouds, which each contain the relevant geometric data for a particular component (pier, arch, spandrel wall, etc.) of the structure. The segmentation is based in the combination of a heuristic approach and image processing tools adapted to voxel structures. The proposed methodology provides the essential processed data required for structural health monitoring of masonry arch bridges based on geometric anomalies. The method was validated using a representative sample of masonry arch bridges. The results demonstrate that this tool can provide data for further structural operations without requiring neither training in laser scanning technology nor high-performance computers for such data processing.

Infrastructure asset management – the TRUST approach and professional tools

Strategic asset management (AM) of urban water infrastructures faces the challenge of dealing with expensive and long-lasting assets of a very diverse nature and wide-ranging useful lives and costs. Typically, utility managers inherit an infrastructure with assets in assorted conditions and stages in their lifecycle. They are expected to manage their value in order to ensure adequate service, and make sure that what they pass on to their successors is capable of continuing to do so. Long-term vision is needed, and sound transition paths must be sought in order to ensure that urban water services are sustainable, without jeopardizing the quality of the service provided during the transition. Focusing on the transition to more sustainable services, the TRUST project revisited the concept of sustainability, explored pressures and drivers, and developed and tested a roadmapping methodology to cope with the implementation of disruptive solutions. Leading-edge analysis and assessment methods and tools were developed, multiple technologies were tested, scientific and guidance publications were produced. All of this can be explored and absorbed into a coherent management process. This paper describes the TRUST approach for infrastructure AM, addressing strategic, tactical and operational planning, supported by professional-grade software.

Infrastructure Asset Management: Referees 2015

<i>Infrastructure Asset Management</i>: Referees 2015

Towards the future-proofing of UK infrastructure

Ensuring long-term performance from key infrastructure is essential to enable it to serve society and to maintain a sustainable economy. The future-proofing of key infrastructure involves addressing two broad issues: (i) resilience to unexpected or uncontrollable events (e.g., extreme weather events); (ii) adaptability to required changes in structure and/or operations of the infrastructure in the future. Increasingly, infrastructure owners, designers, builders, governments and operators are being required to consider possible future challenges as part of the life cycle planning for assets and systems that make up key infrastructure. A preliminary study is reported here that aimed at exploring the following questions related to infrastructure (systems): what does ‘future-proofing’ of infrastructural assets mean? Why and when should critical infrastructure be future-proofed? How can infrastructure assets (systems) be prepared for uncertain future events? How can future-proofing considerations be incorporated into infrastructure asset management practices? To seek answers to the above questions, two industrial workshops were conducted that brought together leading practitioners in the UK infrastructure and construction sectors, along with government policymakers. This paper captures lessons learnt from the workshops and proposes a framework for linking future-proofing into asset management considerations. Case studies of Dawlish railway and Heathrow airport are also presented.

Visual Decision Support Tool for Supporting Asset Management Performance, Risk, and Cost Analysis In Collaboration with Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources

Managing urban water infrastructures faces the challenge of jointly dealing with assets of diverse types, useful life, cost, ages and condition. Service quality and sustainability require sound long-term planning, well aligned with tactical and operational planning and management. In summary, the objective of an integrated approach to infrastructure asset management is to assist utilities answer the following questions: The AWARE-P approach ([www.aware-p.org][1]) offers a coherent methodological framework and a valuable portfolio of software tools. It is designed to assist water supply and wastewater utility decision-makers in their analyses and planning processes. It is based on a Plan-Do-Check-Act process and is in accordance with the key principles of the International Standards Organization (ISO) 55000 standards on asset management. It is compatible with, and complementary to WERF's SIMPLE framework. The software assists in strategic, tactical, and operational planning, through a non-intrusive, web-based, collaborative environment where objectives and metrics drive IAM planning. It is aimed at industry professionals and managers, as well as at the consultants and technical experts that support them. It is easy to use and maximizes the value of information from multiple existing data sources, both in data-rich and data-stressed environments. This project aimed at testing, validating, and tailoring the AWARE-P approach and software in the U.S. wastewater services context; developing new open-source software tools. The project produced: This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series ISBN: 9781780407777 (eBook) [1]: http://www.aware-p.org

Railway infrastructure asset management: the whole‐system life cost analysis

Delivering the railway infrastructure whose functionality is sustainable and uncompromised in terms of safety and availability under ever decreasing budget constraints is a great challenge. The successful accomplishment of this task relies on the effective management of individual assets within a wider whole system perspective. This is a highly complex decision-making task where mathematical models are required to enable well-informed choices. In this study, a novel modelling framework is proposed for performing the whole system lifecycle cost analysis. The framework is based on two models: railway network performance and costs. Using the former model investigations of the effects of decisions can be carried out for the individual asset and the whole system. A Petri net modelling technique is used to construct the model. A form of Monte Carlo simulation is then used to obtain model results. The infrastructure performance model is then integrated with the cost model to perform the lifecycle cost analysis. A superstructure example is presented to demonstrate the application of the approach. The results show that taking into account interdependencies among the intervention activities greatly influences, not only the performance of the infrastructure, but also its lifecycle costs and thus should be included in the cost analysis.

Stakeholder participation in long term planning of water infrastructure

Taking stakeholders into account while making plans helps to increase legitimacy. But in long-term planning involvement of stakeholders encounters severe problems. It encounters problems because of the misfit in planning horizons between asset manager and stakeholders. Furthermore, the ambiguous and indistinct character of stakeholders’ ambitions makes successful participation difficult. This article explores ways to deal with this problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term planning within modern water infrastructure asset management. Following theory, this article presents a typology with four types of possible styles for asset management which also gives rise to specific forms of stakeholder participation: (1) monofunctional - asset manager realizes the main function of its assets and manages them with only an eye on the principle core function of the asset; (2) integrated - asset manager realizes an integral approach of its assets, and manages them with this integral approach in mind; (3) accommodating - asset manager realizes the main function of its assets but accommodates other functions as well; and (4) learning - asset manager is responsible for the main function of its assets, but invites stakeholders to participate, intertwine other functions and to manage, explore and develop the system jointly. The feasibility of these styles of asset management is assessed by looking at four cases with a long-term perspective within Dutch water management. We derived possible characteristics of these styles and accompanying stakeholder participation, seen from a long-term perspective. These characteristics give appropriate directions to deal with the problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term issues within modern water and infrastructural asset management.

A trial infrastructure asset management for subway tunnels

In Japan, the construction of social infrastructure has been increasing since the high economic growth in the 1960s. Right now it is a problem in Japan that these infrastructures are deteriorating. It is expected that further deterioration will occur in the future and the maintenance and the effective operation for these infrastructures are now emerging the significant subjects. Under these circumstances, a managing method named as an infrastructure asset management is beginning to be employed recently. Infrastructure asset management is a strategic management of public and private physical assets including subway tunnels during their use in the society, which enables us to manage physical assets effectively and efficiently. The goal aimed at this paper is to conduct a mid and long term efficient maintenance and operation plan for the subway tunnels and to decide the proper budget for rehabilitation.

Climate change in asset management of infrastructure: A riskbased methodology applied to disruption of traffic on road networks due to the flooding of tunnels

This paper presents a risk-based method to quantify climate change effects on road infrastructure, as a support for decision-making on interventions. This can be implemented in climate adaptation plans as an element of asset management. The method is illustrated by a specific case in which traffic on a road network is disrupted by the flooding of a tunnel due to extreme rainfall. Novel techniques to describe both probability of occurrence and consequences of an event are integrated into the proposed risk-based approach. To model a typical climate-change related phenomenon, i.e. rainfall intensity-duration, a model using copulas is proposed as well as a method to account for uncertainty using structured expert judgement. To quantify the consequences, an existing quick scan tool is adopted. The method calculates the risk of flooding of a tunnel, expressed in both probability of occurrence and subsequent additional travel duration on the road network. By comparison of this evolving risk to a societally acceptable threshold, the remaining resilience of the tunnel is evaluated. Furthermore, the method assesses the development of the resilience over time as a result of projected climate change. The maximum time-to-intervention is defined as the period up until the moment when the resilience is depleted. By application of the method to a tunnel in two different contexts, i.e. in a regional road network and a highway network, it is shown that the consequences of tunnel flooding may differ by an order of magnitude (25-fold for the example). Using a risk-based decision-making perspective leads to significant differences in the maximum time-to-intervention. In the example case the year of intervention is determined at 2020 for a tunnel in a highway network, while interventions can be postponed until 2140 in a regional road network.

Challenges in infrastructure asset management

Abstract: Infrastructure owners are facing a number of challenges in an increasingly difficult economic and political setting, and are seeking novel approaches to are required to meet the demands of operators, shareholders and other stakeholders. Owners are demanding greater value, for less overall cost, from their assets. New technologies enable higher performance and greater safety, but at a price. Initial purchase costs are rising, leading to longer periods in service. Maintenance requires a more highly skilled, and so more expensive, workforce. This paper summarises the outputs of two industrial workshops carried out in the UK and USA targeted at identifying the major challenges faced by infrastructure owners and operators. These challenges provide guidance to the academic community for directing research activities to address the needs of industry, thus delivering maximum impact.

The Shaded Dome™: A Smart, Cool & Adaptable Facility for Sport Venues

Sports are an integral part of human life and their practice is a common pleasure among people all over the world. Once nature does not provide the required climate conditions for that to happen, humans can take action. Based on that concept, a consortium of three Dutch companies (Zwarts & Jansma Architects, Royal HaskoningDHV, and Polyned) presents a sharp, cool and innovative idea that can facilitate sport's industry in desert-covered areas; the Shaded Dome™. The Shaded Dome™ is a semi-permanent facility, comprised of an air-supported dome excluding any internal supports. A very light and highly resistant outer fabric tent (the Shade) covers it, transforming it into an astonishing state-of-the-art building. A grid of cavity struts links the two layers, creating a peripheral structural system that supports the whole structure. A pleasant internal microclimate is enabled by a constant natural airflow between the dome and the shade together with the use of a custom made combination of several membrane materials. This passive design element provides protection from extreme climatological conditions like solar radiation, wind, high air temperature, humidity and precipitation. The first real-scale models are already under development and the results are extremely encouraging. The current tests show an almost 20oC temperature decline between the dome's skins, reducing consequently the need for high demanding cooling systems. Next to that the Shaded Dome™ requires limited transport volume, and can be constructed and dismantled in a matter of days. Thus, the preponderant fabrication plan promotes the sources’ economy, the efficient materials’ use, the reusability of the product and the self-support of its energy needs, highlighting that way a new concept on the asset management of future sport infrastructure. Moving into an era where the need for dynamic constructions is becoming more and more intense, the Shaded Dome™ can constitute an easy to build, quick and fit-for-purpose solution which can efficiently meet any sport infrastructure requirements.

Integrated analytics system for electric industry asset management

Energy and utility companies are asset-intensive and often have aging infrastructure. They are also making a transition from time-based maintenance and heuristic decision-making to condition-driven maintenance and information-based decision-making. Achieving the objectives for infrastructure asset management requires integration of information from multiple heterogeneous data sources. This data resides in diverse and distributed systems of record, and these systems have proprietary data formats, data semantics, and data stewardship processes. It is challenging to organize these varieties of data sources into an integrated system to enable development and deployment of a wide variety of advanced asset analytics to support an effective asset management strategy. In this paper, we report on an integrated analytics system that addresses challenges in 1) organizing the data sources into a coherent integrated data model, 2) providing core capability of history reconstruction and other data services, and 3) provisioning to handle the large volume of historical data.

Suggestion for a Framework for a Sustainable Infrastructure Asset Management Manual in Korea

This study proposes a framework for an infrastructure asset management manual containing infrastructure asset management processes and operation techniques, which can be adjusted by different ordering authorities to develop their own manuals. The following conclusions were drawn in this study. First, the justification for implementation of asset management was examined through analysis of changes and status of asset management in domestic infrastructure, and the current status and insufficiencies in the asset management manuals of the government and ordering authorities were inspected. Second, the current status and systems of infrastructure asset management manuals in developed foreign nations such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States were examined, to analyze and compare the characteristics of asset management manuals among different nations. The directivity for composition of an infrastructure asset management manual in Korea was deduced for reference. Third, based on the directivity for composition of a domestic and foreign infrastructure asset management manual, a framework for an infrastructure asset management manual that can be utilized by the ordering authorities was proposed for (1) a general infrastructure asset management manual connected to global asset management manuals; (2) a manual that considers the asset management experience of the ordering authorities; (3) a systematic manual that takes user convenience into account; and (4) a circulatory process, which links infrastructure policy and strategy in the decision-making stage.

ASSET LEVELS OF SERVICE-BASED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT: A FRAMEWORK

The most significant challenge facing municipalities today is a shortage of funds required to upgrade or expand aging infrastructure. A chronic lack of funding impairs a municipality's ability to maintain desired infrastructure levels of service. Over the last decade, municipalities in Canada have faced the pressures of increased complexities in infrastructure asset management decision making, which to some extent is attributed to cost escalation, increasing demand, and interdependencies between infrastructure networks. This paper presents a framework to develop an asset levels of service (ALOS)-based decision support system for municipal infrastructure funding investments. This paper focuses primarily on the allocation of funds in the maintenance, rehabilitation, and repair (MR&amp;R) of municipal networks based on ALOS, future demand, and network interdependencies.