Integrating Economic and Utility Concepts for a Comprehensive Bridge Valuation Model

Current approaches in bridge valuation mostly focus on engineering construction costs while neglecting other values generated by the bridge's functionality and utilization, along with other indirect economic values of a bridge. Such limitations prevent public agencies from capturing the true asset value of their bridges to make informed management decisions. The objective of this paper is to develop a comprehensive bridge asset valuation methodology that is based on the utility theory concept to better represent the asset value of a bridge. Various factors featuring the bridge asset value are characterized and considered in the model including physical condition, safety, mobility, average annual daily traffic (AADT), direct time savings, and so on. These factors are categorized into economic value and utility-based value and quantified with specific performance measures. The applicability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through a case study using five real-world bridges in Austin, Texas. The results show that the integrated, comprehensive model is able to effectively evaluate the overall asset value of a bridge. Finally, the paper discusses how public agencies can take advantage of the evaluation results to better understand bridge asset value and make more insightful decisions in bridge management practice.