Cold Region Pedestrian Bridge Prototype Maintenance Plan

Abstract

In recent years there have been several failures of pedestrian bridges in the network of trails maintained by the Municipality of Anchorage (MOA), Parks and Recreation Department, causing the MOA to realize that they need to develop and maintain a bridge maintenance protocol. This project, the Cold Region Pedestrian Bridge Prototype Maintenance Plan, provides a prototype application and platform created to allow the MOA to obtain and utilize information collected by non-engineer workers to report on the condition of various pedestrian bridges (“Prototype Platform”). The Prototype Platform has three major components: the Bridge Inspection Application (BIA), a Bridge Risk Evaluation program (BRE), and the determination of Bridge Risk Categories (BRC). These three components will help the MOA to record bridge condition information, identify safety conditions that need to be addressed, classify the condition of the pedestrian bridges, group them into one of several broad risk categories, and provide the MOA with a way of accessing this information in a more organized manner. This project will provide information about the background of the MOA pedestrian bridges, their importance to the MOA, and prior work done relating to pedestrian bridge inspection approaches. It will also provide detailed information about components of the Prototype Platform, the testing of the components, and recommendations for the future. This project is an overall asset management tool that will help the MOA identify future potential risks on their pedestrian bridge system. The MOA intends to use this data in conjunction with more detailed reports to provide an overall condition assessment for the pedestrian bridges in Anchorage, Alaska. It is understood by all parties that the Prototype Platform is a first step in a broader effort to create a more robust pedestrian bridge maintenance management plan. The fact that the inspection data will be obtained by non-engineer field workers, and is somewhat simplistic and limited as to its content, makes the results from the field inspection data only a place to start. However, given the very real budget constraints and limited resources available to the MOA, the Prototype Platform gives the MOA a way to make meaningful progress in implementing a maintenance protocol. The BIA should be used annually as part of a routine review of pedestrian bridges. However, routine inspections conducted using the application should not replace full inspections and full structural analysis reports that can only be conducted by a professional structural engineer when needed.