ABSTRACT

In a context of climate change under scare capital resources (PIARC 2011), the need for risk-based assessments to prioritize risk and optimize budgets/resources for maximized service life performance of road infrastructure is increasingly urgent. This paper, which focuses on climate change and impact of traffic growth in the determination of optimal strategies, is organized as follows.

The methodology to model degradation due to the ageing process is briefly presented. Using the inventory of the asset and condition assessment as input, the method aims to determine some degradation profiles for road infrastructures such as bridge components, retaining walls and steep embankments depending on their age, traffic volume or environmental conditions.

The risk analysis is based on a stochastic Markov chain degradation model (Lounis 2003) which also includes potential effects of climate change and traffic growth. Two failure modes are considered herein: (i) loss of serviceability (minor structural failure or equipment failures that need some urgent repair actions), and (ii) structural failure (major structural failure that need some urgent major rehabilitation). These failure modes are influenced first of all by the ageing process that will be considered through the introduction of degradation matrices of infrastructure components. Climate change and traffic load increase will also affect these degradation matrices.

The optimization procedure is then the core of asset management principles. Optimal management strategies, based on the consequences of possible actions on the future condition of the system, are determined through an optimization process which considers uncertainty. Such optimization procedures should allow NRAs to assess the necessary additional effort to satisfy performance constraints under different scenarios of traffic growth and climate change (Figure 1). Overall annual maintenance cost without or with additional degradation due to climate change. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315207681/cd556cd4-4dcf-4efe-8e29-56fc67b8bfbd/content/fig235_1.tif"/>