Date of Award
6-2011
Degree Name
Master of Science in Engineering
Department
Civil and Construction Engineering
First Advisor
Dr. Pingbo Tang
Second Advisor
Dr. Osama Abuddayyeh
Third Advisor
Dr. Yufeng Hu
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Campus Only
Abstract
In the United States, state Departments of Transportation (DOT) are confronted with the dilemma of increasing amounts of functioning obsolete and structurally deficient bridges and limited resources available for bridge condition monitoring and maintenance. Most existing studies on prioritization of bridge maintenance activities are for bridges in a particular region (e.g., a city or state) based on the condition evaluation reports of bridges. Limited studies have quantitatively evaluated the importance of various data items for revealing and predicting the conditions of bridges. As a result, bridge inspectors cannot make objective, quantitative trade-off analysis for prioritizing the data collection activities when the budget and resource constraints do not allow complete data collections.
Using the data accumulated through the National Bridge Inventory program by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), this study investigates the internal and external correlations between bridge condition data and environmental conditions through quantitative statistical and visual analysis of the conditions of a group of bridges in four regions within United States.
The research will lead to a clearer picture of the critical factors influencing bridge condition ratings to support the bridge maintenance decisions of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
Recommended Citation
Alqahtani, Saad Aoun, "Statistical and Visualization Approach for Ranking Factors Affecting NBI Bridge Rating" (2011). Masters Theses. 383.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/383