Combined RAMS and LCC analysis in railway and road transport infrastructures

Life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis is an assessment technique used to evaluate costs incurred during the life-cycle of a system to help in long term decision making. In railway and road transport infrastructures, costs are subject to numerous uncertainties associated to the operation and maintenance phase. By integrating in the LCC the stochastic nature of failure using Reliability, Maintainability, Availability and Safety (RAMS) analyses, maintenance costs can be more reliably estimated. This paper presents an innovative approach for a combined RAMS&LCC methodology for linear transport infrastructures which has been developed under the H2020 project INFRALERT. Results of the application of such methodology in two real use cases are shown, one for rail and another one for road. The use cases show how the approach is implemented in practice