Risk-based portfolio management of civil infrastructure assets under deep uncertainties associated with climate change: a robust optimisation approach

Abstract

Managers of civil infrastructure systems are facing the challenge to effectively and efficiently manage the ageing and deteriorating asset portfolio while accommodating ever increasing demand resulting from socioeconomic development and climate change. In this article, a novel approach using robust optimisation is proposed for risk-based portfolio management of civil infrastructure assets under deep uncertainties associated with climate change. Robust optimisations based on minimax loss and minimax regret criteria are employed to yield intervention plans that can effectively reduce the long-term risk under different realisations of future scenarios. Through sensitivity analysis, it is found that the obtained solutions from robust optimisation are less sensitive to the factors that require long-term predictions (e.g. change in future hazard and deterioration conditions) than those that do not (e.g. the preference of the decision-maker on user cost and the efficiency of intervention actions). Therefore, the proposed approach is especially suitable for management under deep uncertainty. The proposed approach is applied to plan intervention actions for bridges over the Lehigh River, Pennsylvania under deterioration and flood-induced scour, both of which are affected by climate change.

Keywords:

• Robust optimisation
• risk assessment
• portfolio management
• climate change
• deterioration
• bridge scour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the financial support received from the U.S. National Science Foundation Grant CMMI 1537926. The opinions and conclusions presented in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organisation.