Abstract
It is very easy to understand the importance of port facilities because they are expected to protect the hinterland and create social and economical bases. A port facility has a long lifetime and must be expected to meet demands during its lifetime that cannot be foreseen. However, it is rather difficult to forecast socioeconomic changes during such the long lifetime at the planning and design stages or even at maintenance stages.
For existing port facilities in Japan, because of the revision of the ministerial ordinances in 2007, it was obligatorily implemented to formulate a strategic maintenance plan and carry out performance/function-keeping work based on the maintenance plan. Under considering particularity of port structures mentioned above, it is very important to determine the period of service because the role of port depends on international relocation of production bases, choice of port call, and subsequent changes in needs and functions.
To realize excellent management of port facilities from the viewpoints of not only physical deterioration but functional obsolescence, the authors propose a facility management system taken into account the physical lifetime predicted by using the overall condition index and the socioeconomic lifetime to meet the changes in needs.
In this paper, current maintenance system and recent technological development for assessment on structural performance of port facilities are briefly summarized and some examples are introduced how the changes in needs have accelerated the obsolescence of port facilities. Then, the facility management system proposed is discussed with providing its application examples.
