Bridge Inspection Strategies

The nation's bridges are deteriorating at an alarming rate. Bridge management deals with the improvement of these bridges through systematic inspection and maintenance. Inspection of bridges in the United States is normally performed at two-year intervals, subject to change if requested by state agencies. This paper proposes an inspection strategy based on a bridge-deterioration model obtained through statistical analysis of bridge-inspection data in the state of Florida. The methodology for deriving deterioration models is presented in a flowchart. A case study is presented to illustrate the methodology. The inspection strategy is simulated using the derived deterioration model, and results are compared with the current Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) practice. The proposed inspectionstrategy schedules bridge inspection based on the prediction of the bridge condition. Implementing the strategy results in economic savings of 38% and the untying of personnel and equipment