Life Cycle Management Tools For Civil Infrastructure

Several life cycle management tools were developed in Finland during the years 2002-2008. The tools were made for bridges, roads, building envelopes and nuclear power plants. All these systems were based on the basic ideas of the European Union Project LIFECON in 2001-2003. The objective of the LIFECON project was to develop a model of a predicted and integrated life cycle management system for infrastructures. The basic ideas can be expressed by the following characteristics of the system: predictive, integrated, life-cycle based and probabilistic. The structures whether bridges, roads, buildings or nuclear power plants are divided into smaller structural parts which can be treated as homogenous with respect to materials, structural features and environmental conditions. These structural parts are called "modules" and they serve as basic structural units in the analysis and planning processes of the system. The structural databases which serve as initial data sources in the calculation processes are consistent with the modular breakdown of structures. The core of the management system consists of a combined condition, cost and environmental impact analysis. The condition analysis is produced automatically based on degradation models, predefined limit states of condition and the Markov Chain method. The condition analysis is capable of predicting the probability of the modules to be at any of the condition states at any year during the treated design period. The analysis contains also an automatic condition guarding system which triggers maintenance, repair and rehabilitation (MR&R) actions whenever the predefined limit state of condition is exceeded with a maximum allowable probability. The design process includes three stages: MR&R action design for modules, project design for the structures and resource design for annual implementation of projects. The project design means combining of actions into groups of actions which are called projects. At this stage the angle of design is changed from the module level to the structural level. At this phase the timing of actions can also be slightly changed if it is synergetically reasonable to combine some actions to be implemented at the same time. At the last stage of design the the annual project costs are harmonised with the annual budgets.