Programmed Maintenance of Motorway Bridges: Italian Experience in the use of ‘Expert Systems’

Abstract

The maintenance management program is designed to provide the motorway network manager with the tools needed to program maintenance of an entire aggregate of structures of widely varying structural, environmental and ‘generational’ characteristics. Using specially designed management software one can then develop overall assessments of structure reliability and thus obtain a classification on the basis of their state of conservation. The reliability assessment automatically expressed by the computer (the ‘expert’ system) is of a global nature, i.e. aimed at creating an objective list of intervention priorities for the entire population of the structures under management.