Effect of the shape of ROC curves on Risk Based Inspection: a parametric study

Owners of civil infrastructures base their maintenance decisions schemes mainly both on structural integrity assessment and consequence analysis. Some inputs come from information collected by inspections by non-destructive or destructive tools. Uncertainties and error of measurements can lead to bad decisions but are rarely integrated into the process of decision. Nowadays, Risk Based Inspection (RBI) provides the basic concepts for optimizing the maintenance of existing structures. It lies both on reliability computations and probabilistic modelling of inspection results. In a first part, we focus on the benefit of the combination of multiple Non-Destructive Testing tools (NDT) and the role of expert judgement in this process. RBI of steel harbour structures is used for illustration. Second part is dedicated to highlight the effect of the shape of ROC curve on the decision process by means of a parametric study