Overview of Decision Support Tools for Sustainable Infrastructure Management
Date
2013
Authors
Vanier, D.J.
Froese, Thomas M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
CSCE 4th Construction Specialty Conference
Abstract
There has been considerable and well-documented concern about the current state of
Canada’s infrastructure. The causes of these challenges are common to many government and utility owners: aging and deteriorating infrastructure; inadequate funding; competing organizational objectives; questionable maintenance, repair, rehabilitation and replacement practices in the past; demographic and population shifts, and new understandings about sustainability objectives. These challenges necessitate that the infrastructure industry excel at developing and managing their infrastructure systems to their maximum potential. To support and improve this capability, The University of British Columbia is developing a research program to advance the state of decision support tools for sustainable infrastructure management. This paper describes this proposal and summarizes the state of practice in Canada regarding decision making in sustainable infrastructure management. It then outlines a course of action to address the current needs. The proposal addresses three important areas in the field of sustainable infrastructure management. First, it builds on work to develop comprehensive techniques to assess the sustainability of infrastructure systems. Second, it attempts to advance multi-objective optimization techniques and tools for predicting the long-term performance of infrastructure systems and optimal strategies under a variety of maintenance regime alternatives. Third, it develops data interoperability solutions to create an infrastructure data integrator as a computing platform for this work.
Description
Keywords
Sustainable Infrastructure Management, Decision Support, Assessment, Interoperability
Citation
Vanier, D.J. & Froese, T.M. (2013). Overview of Decision Support Tools for Sustainable Infrastructure Management. Paper presented at CSCE 4th Construction Specialty Conference, Montréal, QC. https://csce.ca/en/publications/montreal- 2013/