A System for Rehabilitation Planning of Infrastructure Projects

According to the Report Card in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), infrastructure across the nation is poorly maintained, unable to meet current and future demands, and in some cases, unsafe. The average deterioration grade on all of the nation‟s infrastructure systems is D (A = Exceptional, B = Good, C = Mediocre, D = Poor, F = Failing). The ASCE estimates $2.2 trillion (estimated 5 year need) as the total cost of repairs needed to upgrade the deteriorated condition of infrastructure. However, a decline in the federal investment over the years for supporting infrastructure systems requires that the states and local communities carry most of the burden of managing those systems. This paper presents a web-based application tool called Analytical System for Planning of Infrastructure REhabilitation (ASPIRE) to help public agencies plan efficient rehabilitation strategies within limited budgets. They can make final decisions on infrastructure rehabilitation by estimating the physical conditions of facilities and allocating limited budget based on the evaluation score in the presented application. The ASPIRE gets input from five different participants who have their own roles: 1) a supervisor; 2) a Primary Decision Maker (PDM); 3) Group Members (GMs); 4) a Field Engineer (FE); and 5) a Cost Estimator (ES). The ASPIRE also provides a flexible evaluation database according to the type of infrastructure based on technical and social/political criteria and sub-criteria levels. The group evaluation module in the model provides a more objective evaluation score of infrastructure systems. This paper describes the web-based application and illustrates the results of a case study to explain the model and its application.