ABSTRACT
With an average age of about 60 years, the infrastructure of the German Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration (Wasserstrassen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung, WSV) in Germany is overaged. A situation is reached, whereby a quarter of these constructions is older than 100 years. Immediate measures are necessary to expand their technical lifetime and prevent construction failures. Beyond the main objectives of continuously reducing the maintenance backlog and increasing the renewal rate, the WSV is encountering significant impediments, e.g. limited budgets and reduced staff resources, to name only a few. To achieve these objectives, indicators, including for example the economic importance of waterways, their current condition and the age of the structure, which reflect the urgency of immediate actions, have to be defined. Although these indicators do not characterize the current situation of the waterway infrastructure, they might assist in determining priority order of actions to be implemented. Likewise, risk assessment must be integrated into the management system. Obviously, the occurrence of a construction failure cannot be precisely determined with probabilistic methods or available data. However, in a first step potential consequences are analyzed to develop a transparent and objective method of prioritization of repair actions.
