Evaluation of Bridge Maintenance Priorities in Megacities

Bridges are key social overhead capital facilities with a direct impact on citizen safety and the socioeconomic development of a country. Many bridges in South Korea were completed during the nation’s period of rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, meaning that bridge aging is now accelerating and should be of real concern. Based on records of other highly developed countries not having adequate maintenance systems for old bridges and consequently experiencing a number of tragic bridge collapses, Korea is at risk of following suit. Being able to measure the efficiency of bridge management considering economic and social values is therefore critical. In this work, a qualitative bridge maintenance priority evaluation model using open-source bridge information was developed. The model was evaluated by applying it to eight actual bridges located in Daegu Metropolitan City, Korea. It is concluded that aging bridge maintenance and management can be performed more efficiently and reliably if the model proposed in this work is used.