The effects of methodological uncertainties on repair prioritization: An exploratory analysis of national road bridges in Lao PDR

Abstract

A systematic approach to determining the maintenance priority of road bridges is important for ensuring that limited resources are directed to the bridges in greatest need. Multicriteria decision-making is often used for priority evaluation, but the multiplicity of non-equivalent methods may lead to undesirable results. The goal of this study is to evaluate the effect of methodological uncertainties on the prioritization of road bridges by applying uncertainty analysis to propagate the effect of different criteria selection, criteria weighting, and criteria aggregation methods to the bridge priority ranking. A prioritization framework and data on national road bridges from Lao PDR were used. It was found that the bridges with the highest and lowest average priority were the least sensitive to methodological choice, whereas the sensitivity of bridges with intermediate levels of priority varied widely. In-depth examination revealed that even if two bridges shared a similar level of priority, their sensitivity to methodological uncertainty varied depending on the bridge condition and characteristics and how these were scored. The results illustrate how uncertainty analysis can be utilized for improving the robustness of decision-making for bridge management, but it is important to develop the methodological alternatives by transparent and scientific means.