ABSTRACT
The need to maintain and safely operate aging infrastructural assets has become a fundamental requirement for road managers all over the world. To correctly estimate the optimal intervention schedule on complex road networks, a new infrastructure management software tool for the support of road manager decision making and the optimization of road investments was created. The software is capable of collecting all the data related to inventory, inspection, maintenance and monitoring of infrastructure assets, and then use them to build a finite element model of the single structure or of an assembly of structures, and solve the model in term of structural safety and user comfort. From these preliminary results, the software implements a stochastic simulation of the aging process of the structures over a limited or unlimited time period. Finally, an algorithm calculates the optimal sequence of inspections and interventions to be performed in order to keep the infrastructure safe for road users while maintaining an acceptable service level. The final outcome is a plan of the asset’s associated costs, ensuring that the investments of the road manager in the entire network are well-targeted, maximizing lives saved and road safety. In this way, the return on investment is automatically optimized.
