Decision-Support System for Infrastructure Preservation

Abstract

This study presents the development of a decision-support system for the preservation of civil infrastructure. The system aims at providing assistance for decisions concerned with the three main tasks of infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation: symptom observation, condition diagnosis, and treatment identification. Knowledge graphs and damage assessment are two methodologies incorporated into the system with a uniform representation scheme to organize the knowledge and data. The architecture of the system consists of knowledge bases, databases, analysis programs, and various interfaces. To illustrate the developed decision-support system, a case study involving the New York State Thruway is presented and provides a framework for a discussion of the functional integrity of the system in providing assistance for data and decision needs. It is concluded that the formalization of decision methodologies in achieving the functional integrity of a decision-support system is an important contribution of the system development.