Bridge Deterioration Analysis Based on Censored Data: A Case Study in Yunnan Province

Bridge deterioration reflects the change of bridge condition and it is caused by many factors. Predicting bridge deterioration as a research problem has attracted increasing attention around the world. Most methods contrived in previous work and the results are satisfactory. Despite their considerable success, these methods are weighed down by some problems. First, nature environment and climate factors are not considered. Second, they neglected the existence of censored data. Censored data means that the event outcome of interest can’t be observed exactly because of some reasons. It is usual in bridge deterioration prediction and will cause deviation between the prediction result and the actual situation. In this paper, we propose a method to tackle the censored data issue and add nature environment and climate factors into deterioration analysis. This method uses an indicator variable to identify censored data in parameter estimation. In order to ensure the objectiveness of experiment, data collected from the Yunnan Communications Investment & Construction Group LTD are used in this study. Empirical results show that different structure and material of bridge may have different effect on bridge condition. In addition, we confirmed that nature environment and climate can affect the deterioration rate of bridge comparing with other factors in Yunnan Province. The bridges in the areas with moderate temperature and large precipitation may deteriorate more slowly. These findings are important for bridge management and maintenance.