ABSTRACT
Bridges are one of the essential components of road infrastructure, however, if they are not maintained, their rehabilitation causes huge burdens on the country’s economy. In Lao PDR, due to the absence of a maintenance management plan, the prioritization of the bridges for the maintenance plan does not depend on technical factors, due to which the important structure gets neglected. The research explores the application of Fuzzy-Analytic-Hierarchy-Process (FAHP) and Linear-Aggregation methods (LAM), the multi-criteria-decision-making techniques, on a database obtained from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, to solve bridge maintenance prioritization problems. Both methods involved determining the weight of criteria on the three bridge characteristics i.e., condition, aging, and maximum loading. FAHP was found suitable if the bridge prioritization can be done relative to the characteristics of all the other bridges, whereas LAM can be applied if the priority is determined just by the characteristics of the bridge itself.
