An Overview of Markovian Models for Bridge Management Systems

by William T. Scherer, Univ of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States,
Douglas M. Glagola, Univ of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Infrastructure: Planning and Management

Abstract:

The typical infrastructure maintenance decision-making environment involves multiples objectives, uncertainty, and dynamics of the most commonly used infrastructure models, which captures these qualities, is a Markov Decision Process (MDP). In this paper we explore two critical issues associated with the use of MDP models. The first involves state-apace explosion, one of the most common problems with MDP models. We address the problem of the state-space cardinality and present approaches for dealing with complexity. The second issue with MDP models is the compliance with the Markovian property. With both issues we use the Virginia bridge system data to illustrate the concepts and the validity of the MDP approach.

Subject Headings: Markov process | Maintenance and operation | Bridge management | Systems management | Infrastructure | Information management | Mathematical models | Virginia | United States

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