Infrastructure Asset Management for Different Types of Facilities Using Normalized Level of Service

Abstract

Infrastructure is understood as a lifeline network for the society. As facilities are connected with each other, failure or poor performance of a facility in the network affects the rest of the network resulting in the overall performance deterioration. Social infrastructures such as roads, bridges, water supply, wastewater treatment, parks, and public buildings are all connected each other. Failure and or poor performance of an infrastructure would result the poor-performance infrastructure network. In order to keep the overall performance of the infrastructure network at certain level, the performance level of different facilities should be maintained in balance, i.e., performance leveling. Managing different facility in same level of performance is like comparing the qualities of oranges and apples. However, the facility managers must compare the performance of roads, bridges, water supplies, public buildings and parks in order to allocate appropriate budget to maintain those facilities at almost same level of performance. Authors have developed a method to normalize the level of service of infrastructure to compare different type of infrastructure performing at same level of service. First, levels of service indicators have been identified; then, they have been converted into normalized values, which are used as cross-asset management. Normalization factors were derived from surveying of users and statistically calibrated to remove the biases. This paper describes the development of level of service indicators and normalization methods for cross-asset management.