Risk based maintenance of civil structures

The use of risk based maintenance approaches for civil structures today are limited to relatively few specific cases. Nevertheless, application of the methodology provides the means needed in present society where ageing constructions, multiple use of the built environment and increasing intensity of transport and travel introduce the need to reassess and manage the safety of the situation encountered. This article presents the requirements that have to be met in order to incorporate enduring cost-effective risk-assessment procedures for the risk-management of large structures — with lots of components and approaches — by combining various approaches in one information model. The volatility of present cost-intensive risk-assessment methods, which disables many applications, is tackled by categorising the determining factors using “typicals”.