National Academies Press: OpenBook
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14432.
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TRANSPORTAT ION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2010 www.TRB.org N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I V E H I G H W A Y R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M NCHRP REPORT 668 Subscriber Categories Maintenance and Preservation • Bridges and Other Structures Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges George Hearn UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER Boulder, CO Paul D. Thompson Castle Rock, CO Walter Mystkowski Denver, CO William Hyman APPLIED RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, INC. Champaign, IL Research sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration

NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM Systematic, well-designed research provides the most effective approach to the solution of many problems facing highway administrators and engineers. Often, highway problems are of local interest and can best be studied by highway departments individually or in cooperation with their state universities and others. However, the accelerating growth of highway transportation develops increasingly complex problems of wide interest to highway authorities. These problems are best studied through a coordinated program of cooperative research. In recognition of these needs, the highway administrators of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials initiated in 1962 an objective national highway research program employing modern scientific techniques. This program is supported on a continuing basis by funds from participating member states of the Association and it receives the full cooperation and support of the Federal Highway Administration, United States Department of Transportation. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies was requested by the Association to administer the research program because of the Board’s recognized objectivity and understanding of modern research practices. The Board is uniquely suited for this purpose as it maintains an extensive committee structure from which authorities on any highway transportation subject may be drawn; it possesses avenues of communications and cooperation with federal, state and local governmental agencies, universities, and industry; its relationship to the National Research Council is an insurance of objectivity; it maintains a full-time research correlation staff of specialists in highway transportation matters to bring the findings of research directly to those who are in a position to use them. The program is developed on the basis of research needs identified by chief administrators of the highway and transportation departments and by committees of AASHTO. Each year, specific areas of research needs to be included in the program are proposed to the National Research Council and the Board by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Research projects to fulfill these needs are defined by the Board, and qualified research agencies are selected from those that have submitted proposals. Administration and surveillance of research contracts are the responsibilities of the National Research Council and the Transportation Research Board. The needs for highway research are many, and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program can make significant contributions to the solution of highway transportation problems of mutual concern to many responsible groups. The program, however, is intended to complement rather than to substitute for or duplicate other highway research programs. Published reports of the NATIONAL COOPERATIVE HIGHWAY RESEARCH PROGRAM are available from: Transportation Research Board Business Office 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 and can be ordered through the Internet at: http://www.national-academies.org/trb/bookstore Printed in the United States of America NCHRP REPORT 668 Project 14-15 ISSN 0077-5614 ISBN 978-0-309-15524-3 Library of Congress Control Number 2010941142 © 2010 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA, FHWA, FMCSA, FTA, or Transit Development Corporation endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educational and not-for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP. NOTICE The project that is the subject of this report was a part of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, conducted by the Transportation Research Board with the approval of the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The members of the technical panel selected to monitor this project and to review this report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance. The report was reviewed by the technical panel and accepted for publication according to procedures established and overseen by the Transportation Research Board and approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this report are those of the researchers who performed the research and are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Research Council, or the program sponsors. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the National Research Council, and the sponsors of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to the object of the report.

CRP STAFF FOR NCHRP REPORT 668 Christopher W. Jenks, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Crawford F. Jencks, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs Amir N. Hanna, Senior Program Officer Eileen P. Delaney, Director of Publications Maria Sabin Crawford, Assistant Editor NCHRP PROJECT 14-15 PANEL Field of Maintenance—Area of Maintenance of Way and Structures Peter J. Weykamp, New York State DOT, Albany, NY (Chair) Dan Scherschligt, Kansas DOT, Topeka, KS Scott A. Sabol, Vermont Technical College, Randolph Center, VT Arunprakash M. Shirole, (formerly with Aurora and Associates), Robbinsdale, MN Edward Welch, (formerly with New Hampshire DOT), Concord, NH Pe-Shen Yang, Arizona DOT, Phoenix, AZ Thomas D. Everett, FHWA Liaison Eric P. Munley, FHWA Liaison Wendy L. Gagnier, AASHTO Liaison Frank N. Lisle, TRB Liaison AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NCHRP Project 14-15 was performed by the Regents of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. George Hearn was the Principal Investigator and the author of this report. Mr. Paul D. Thompson, Mr. Walter Mystkowski, and Mr. William Hyman (formerly with Applied Research Associates) were consul- tants on this project. Essential contributions were made by several departments of transportation (DOTs) including Alabama, California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These DOTs generously provided data on their bridge maintenance work, bridge inventories, and bridge element-level conditions. C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S

This report presents a potential framework for a National Bridge Maintenance Database (NBMD). This framework provides a uniform format for collecting, reporting, and storing information on bridge maintenance actions. Use of this framework will promote compati- bility of maintenance data reported by different agencies and will provide an effective means for using these data in evaluating cost and performance of alternative maintenance appli- cations or as a basis for cost-benefit analysis and evaluation of cost and deterioration mod- els. The material contained in the report should be of immediate interest to state bridge and maintenance engineers and others concerned with the maintenance and management of bridges. A variety of maintenance actions are performed by highway agencies to preserve highway bridges. Although similar maintenance actions are applied, practices for reporting mainte- nance methods, rates, bases of measurement, costs, performance, and other related factors differ among these agencies. There is no widely accepted system for uniformly recording data pertaining to maintenance actions. Without such a system, the reported data cannot be easily interpreted and used outside of individual agencies. Thus research was needed to develop a framework for a database system for collection, storage, and retrieval of related data. This database framework together with clear definitions of maintenance items will ensure proper interpretation of the data and facilitate their use by other highway agencies. Under NCHRP Project 14-15, “Developing a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges,” the University of Colorado at Boulder worked with the objective of developing a framework for a national database system for the collection and archiving of bridge maintenance actions, materials, and methods, and their effectiveness. The research included a review of the current practices relevant to reporting bridge main- tenance programs and developing the framework for a data system for collecting, storing, and reporting information on the contexts, actions, and outcomes of bridge maintenance. The data system was developed as a set of 13 tables presenting bridge maintenance actions together with bridge inventory and condition data. Within the dataset, the outcomes of maintenance actions, reflected by changes in bridge condition, can be evaluated and stud- ied to assess the effectiveness or costs of alternative maintenance applications or evaluate and develop cost and deterioration models. Also, to illustrate use of the framework, data were collected from 12 state departments of transportation (DOTs). These data resulted in complete datasets for 8 DOTs and partially complete datasets for the other 4 DOTs. In addi- tion, to promote consistency in terminology related to bridge maintenance actions, the research compiled and presented a glossary of terms related to bridges and maintenance. F O R E W O R D By Amir N. Hanna Staff Officer Transportation Research Board

The agency’s final report contains five appendices that provide information on bridge maintenance programs, the tables comprising the NBMD framework, a list of the element- level costs of maintenance actions, examples of the database framework use, and software to view and check the data tables. These appendices are not published herein but are avail- able on the NCHRP Report 668 summary webpage at http://www.trb.org/Publications/ Blurbs/164203.aspx.

C O N T E N T S 1 Summary 6 Chapter 1 Background on Bridge Maintenance Programs at U.S. Departments of Transportation 6 Scope of Bridge Maintenance 6 Bridge Maintenance Scope and Definition 9 Terms in Bridge Maintenance 11 Maintenance Actions 14 Bridge Maintenance Data—Existing Practice 19 Maintenance Management Systems 20 Summary on Bridge Maintenance Programs in the United States 22 Chapter 2 National Bridge Maintenance Database 22 A Database for Bridge Maintenance 22 Standard Data for Highway Bridge Maintenance 29 NBMD Database 31 NBMD Tables 32 NBMD Identifiers 32 NBMD Naming Conventions 32 NBMD Keywords 34 NBMD Tables and Data Fields 42 File Formats for NBMD Tables 46 Chapter 3 NBMD Software Applications 46 Directory Structure 46 NBMD Applications 46 NBMD Viewer Application 59 NBMD_XML Application 62 NBMD_Size Application 63 NBMD Keywords Application 65 Additional NBMD Software 66 Chapter 4 Data Sources for NBMD 66 Bridge Inventory Data 66 Bridge Condition Data 66 Bridge Maintenance Data 67 Data Collection 67 Instances of DOT Maintenance 71 Applications of NBMD Data

73 Chapter 5 Element-Level Costs of Maintenance Actions 73 Basic Computation 73 Maintenance Events and Element Condition Data 73 Identifying Elements 74 Element_Unit_Cost_Table 74 List of Element Unit Costs 76 Chapter 6 Glossary of Terms in Highway Bridge Maintenance 84 References 85 Appendices A through E Note: Many of the photographs, figures, and tables in this report have been converted from color to grayscale for printing. The electronic version of the report (posted on the Web at www.trb.org) retains the color versions.

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 668: Framework for a National Database System for Maintenance Actions on Highway Bridges explores a potential framework that provides a uniform format for collecting, reporting, and storing information on bridge maintenance actions for inclusion in a national bridge maintenance database.

Appendixes A through E to NCHRP Report 668 provide detailed information on the different aspects of the research. Links to the individual appendixes are below.

Appendix A: Information on Bridge Maintenance Programs

Appendix B: National Bridge Maintenance Database Tables

Appendix C: List of Element Level Costs of Maintenance Actions

Appendix D: Examples of National Bridge Maintenance Database Uses

Appendix E: Other National Bridge Maintenance Database Tables

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