Practical application of life-cycle management system for shore protection facilities

Abstract

Shore protection facilities have a long lifetime and must be expected to meet demands for providing people living coastlines with safety and security. The principal demands for those facilities seem to be simple but have not been practically so easy to be kept over the requirements. The reasons for those are that facilities are rather big and are exposed to severe environments for materials. Those facts may cause difficulties in even visual inspection. In addition, as it would be very important, rise of the seawater level, etc. due to global warming may affect the function and performance, which has to be taken into account rehabilitation planning. To overcome such difficulties, it is important to pursue coordination between design and maintenance based on the procedure of the life-cycle management through which sustainability indicators would be maximum/minimum. This paper presents the concept and the framework of the life-cycle management system for those facilities and introduces methodologies of the management system particularly feasible to practical maintenance.

Keywords:

• Shore protection facility
• life-cycle management
• performance degradation
• function
• requirements
• inspection
• evaluation
• remedial action

Acknowledgments

Dr Katsufumi Hashimoto, Assistant Professor of Hokkaido University, Dr Ema Kato, Research Group Head of Port and Airport Research Institute, and Messrs. Koichi Furuya and Shuhei Komatsu, Ex-student of Hokkaido University, are fully acknowledged for their great contributions on this research. The author thanks members of Working Group on Harbor and Coastal Structures in Special Committee on Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan Concrete Institute and JSCE Committee on Asset Management for Shore Protection Facility for beneficial discussion.