Bridge Management to the Year 2020 and Beyond

During the past three decades, the art and science of bridge management has experienced significant milestones in its development and implementation. Bridge management systems (BMSs) are now entering into the mainstream of comprehensive transportation asset management. This paper is a successor to “Bridge Management to the Year 2000 and Beyond,” which was published in the proceedings of the 1993 TRB International Conference on Bridge Management. It reviewed the progression of BMS development activities through the 1980s and the early 1990s and then envisioned these systems transitioning into real-life application. This paper reviews subsequent enhancements to the state of the art of bridge life-cycle management in view of the galloping advances in automation and communications technologies that have made, and will continue to make, an enormous impact on the potential and tools available for advancing capabilities of BMSs. Recent emergence of cradle-to-grave, integrated, and comprehensive approaches through bridge information modeling has opened up new horizons for the future of bridge management. This paper examines and projects, to the year 2020 and beyond, the substantive impact of this innovative concept on the coordinated management of the various distinct phases in the bridge life cycle, starting with preliminary and final design and proceeding through construction, day-to-day operations, and project- and network-level planning and capital programming. Further, the paper discusses potential hurdles bridge management practitioners are likely to face and potential successes they are likely to experience.