In recent years there has been growing concern regarding the safety of existing concrete bridges due to deterioration mainly caused by frequent use of de-icing salts and an increase in highway bridge loading The problems of bridge assessment and the requirements for repair, strengthening and replacement are issues which have become increasingly important, not only in the UK, but also In other countries Concrete bridge engineers recommending implementation of repair work are increasingly under severe time and budget limitation Furthermore, the existing bridge assessment methodologies present a considerable problem due to the qualitative and subjective nature of the assessments which can be inconsistent and lead to a fuzzy situation.

This paper describes and discusses the development of COBDA an expert system which includes three methods to deal with the uncertainty problems in the evaluation of concrete bridges The structure of the expert system IS given and the methodology for decision making for deteriorated concrete bridges is discussed.

COBDA is configured by PROLOG for use In a personal computer It comprises 3 different methodologies Performance Index, Fuzzy logic and Bayesian subjective probability.

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