Cloud-Based System for Optimized management and Renewal Planning of Public Infrastructure Assets

Overview

Funding Agency: Government of Canada, NRC-IRAP

Location: Saskatchewan, Canada

Project: Cloud-based system for optimized management and renewal planning of public infrastructure assets.

(for News: July 2015?)

IDS was awarded a project from the Government of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) to support R&D efforts leading to improving the scalability and performance of IDS optimization algorithms, and to implement cloud-based services to enhance the availability and adoption of the software.

Challenge

Public infrastructure systems are the lifelines that support our economy and quality of life by providing critical services such as drinking water, sanitation, and transportation. These systems have a significant impact on the economic, environmental, and social aspects of all communities. Infrastructure agencies are facing unprecedented challenges due to the ageing of infrastructure assets, inadequate renewal budgets, billions of dollars in renewal deficits, and increasing demand on infrastructure services. These challenges have placed significant pressures on these agencies to improve the management of infrastructure systems through adopting optimized risk-based and long-term renewal plans that would ensure maximum return on investment while enhancing infrastructure performance, reliability, and sustainability. However, infrastructure renewal planning solutions that can generate truly optimal plans are virtually non-existent, and most of the available systems still utilize heuristic decision-tree approaches or employ classical incremental cost-benefit analysis, and therefore, cannot generate truly optimal plans.

Solution

Through extensive research and development efforts, IDS has developed a revolutionary optimization algorithm that can generate multi-year system-level truly optimal renewal plans for transportation and municipal infrastructure systems. This algorithm was implemented in software solutions to support risk-based long-term renewal planning of bridges, highways, and water/wastewater networks. The generated renewal plans ensure that the right decisions to rehabilitate or replace assets are made at the right time, at minimum costs, and to achieve maximum return on the investment in terms of minimizing risk of failure and maximizing infrastructure performance at lowest cost. To date, there is no known other software in the market that can guarantee the generation of optimal renewal plans. The IDS software has been successfully used to develop optimized risk-based 20-year renewal plans for bridges, pavements, and water networks. The IDS software, therefore, helps fill a significant gap by addressing a critical and timely need of infrastructure owners and operators.

The Government of Canada, through its Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), is funding a project to further enhance and accelerate the development and commercialization of the IDS software solutions.  Based on a review of patents, software, and literature, an IRAP Competitive Technical Intelligence study has concluded that no other software system “… appear to be directly related or as comprehensive to IDS’s software offering/capabilities.”

The project resulted in further enhancement of the robustness, performance, scalability, security, and user experience of the IDS software. Several improvements were introduced to the software including data management, analytics functions, and geospatial analysis features. The optimization algorithm was improved to enable parallel execution and maximize throughput. Cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) interface was developed to reduce the costs and risk of adoption, leading to wider industry acceptance and uptake.

Multi-Objective Optimization for Preservation Planning of Bridges in Iowa

Iowa-Project

Overview

Client: Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT)

Location: Ames, Iowa, USA

Project: Multi-Objective Optimization for Long-Term Network-Level Preservation Planning of Bridges in Iowa

IDS was commissioned by Iowa DOT to develop an optimized risk-based 20-year preservation plan for the state-owned bridge inventory. IDS used its flagship NBI Optimizer® software to generate optimal preservation plans under a wide range of scenarios, and to analyze the trade-offs among these scenarios to provide evidence-based recommendations to Iowa DOT engineers.

Challenge

Iowa DOT, like other DOTs across the US, is facing unprecedented challenges due to ageing structures, increasing demands and expectations for levels of service, and mounting construction costs. Iowa DOT has been working to implement risk-based approaches and develop long-term preservation plans to ensure sustainability, reliability, and efficiency of state-owned bridges. Iowa DOT required a solution that ensures the generation of optimized project lists over a 20-year planning horizon under a wide range of scenarios. It also required that the generated plans meet a range of policy constraints and align with preservation practices in the department.

Solution

This project involved the use of NBI Optimizer® to develop multi-variate inductive deterioration models for bridge decks, superstructure, and substructure elements and to build a risk-based prioritization scheme based on Iowa DOT Priority Ranking method. The deterioration models were developed based on historical NBI data and considered a range of variables such as age, traffic volume, design load, and deck type, etc. A comprehensive database of preservation methods commonly used in Iowa DOT was created. The preservation methods database included a wide range of technologies including bridge replacement, deck replacement, deck overlay, deck repair, bridge widening, and prestressed beam end repair. The database also implemented a set of constraints and formulae for calculating costs and benefits, as well as to determine applicability constraints of each preservation method according to Iowa DOT policies and work practices.

Over fifteen preservation planning scenarios were investigated to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of various budget profiles on system-wide condition/risk levels and to evaluate budget requirements for desired condition/risk targets. Iowa DOT engineers defined scenario parameters including budget profile, varying annual levels of condition/risk levels, budget splitting among preservation methods, average annual inflation rate, etc. For each scenario, NBI Optimizer® generated optimal and feasible project lists that satisfied all defined criteria and policy constraints. The impact of each scenario on system-wide condition and risk measures were also assessed, including determining expected structurally deficient bridges under each scenario. The software was also used to analyze trade-offs between funding levels and system-wide performance and risk levels based on the results obtained from various scenarios. The generated optimal preservation plans were evaluated by Iowa DOT engineers and compared to the current 5-year plan of the department. NBI Optimizer® SaaS cloud-based services have been used by Iowa DOT staff to analyze planning results, in addition to accessing NBI analytics functions, detailed reports, and interactive maps and dashboards.

The generated 20-year risk-based optimal preservation plans will enable the development of defensible and optimized preservation plans that maximize the return on investment, and to justify planning decisions using objective system-level measures and procedures that are aligned with Iowa DOT’s policies and requirements.