Analytical tool for choosing bridge rehabilitation strategy

Bridge management is the decision-making process for selecting and prioritizing actions necessary to maintain a bridge network within acceptable limits without exceeding budget constraints. Decision support systems can help engineers and practitioners in making effective decisions through: (1) improved identification and information of the infrastructure assets; (2) methodologies for needs assessment; and (3) analytical tools for evaluation of alternative solutions. This paper describes a research to choose a decision making technique for an under development bridge deck decision support system. Four quantitative multiple criteria decision making techniques are evaluated. From these, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is selected to develop an analytical framework to evaluate and rank alternative bridge rehabilitation strategies. The AHP provides an effective analytical tool to deal with complex decision making and has the following qualities: (1) multi-criteria decision making process; (2) utilize both actual measurements and expert judgment in the decision making process; and (3) the process has a special concern with consistency of judgement and it deals with the departure from consistency.