ABSTRACT
Through regional authorities Rijkswaterstaat acts as the asset manager of the Dutch national road network and waterways system. In this role Rijkswaterstaat is responsible for a wide range of structures, e.g. bridges, viaducts, overpasses, tunnels, sluices, and sea defense structures. Given the high economical importance of the national network it is logical that highways agencies will adopt a more conservative approach in the design of new structures in order to minimize major maintenance activities and thus traffic disruption during the full operational service life, see Figure 1. This implies that normally any changes in design solutions from the common approach are treated with serious caution as this imposes a potential and unknown risk for the future availability of the network system.
