Keywords: bridge, highway, preservation, seismic risk, maintenance, management, optimization, genetic algorithm.

Highway bridges are prone to severe deterioration due to earthquake risks in addition to the effects of aging and traffic loading. The large number of bridges in a typical highway network and the variety of their characteristics along with the scarcity of resources render the use of analytical methodologies for developing optimal maintenance and management policies rather imperative. An optimization methodology is presented to provide decision support to engineers regarding appropriate repair, reinforcement, and replacement strategies of highway concrete bridges throughout their expected life cycle in order to ensure acceptable levels of safety and functionality. The methodology considers the critical parameters associated with the seismic risk and other bridge characteristics such as the bridge structural vulnerability, its importance within the highway network, the local seismic hazard, and the foundation soil characteristics. Due to the large size of the optimization model, a genetic algorithm has been employed to provide optimal solutions. The proposed methodology has been applied to a set of existing bridges from the road network in Greece with highly diverging characteristics including areas with different seismicity. Several objective parameters and sets of constraints have been examined. The results provide indications that the proposed methodology can be effective in assisting bridge maintenance and management decisions in areas with seismic risks.

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