Citation

Grivas DA, Shen YC. Transp. Res. Rec. 1995; 1497: 10-18.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The use of fuzzy relations to manage uncertain information in civil infrastructure preservation is addressed. Subjectivity and imprecision of uncertain information and ambiguity of terminological knowledge in preserving infrastructure facilities are the primary motivation for the employment of fuzzy sets and fuzzy relations. Formal decision processes use the concept of knowledge graphs that enable the establishment of general-specific or cause-effect relations between condition factors, as well as relations between condition and symptom factors. Fuzzy relations allow the characterization of the uncertainty associated with these relations. Fuzzy graphs assimilating the degree of certainty involved in decision processes are used to illustrate the connection strength of the elements in the associated fuzzy subsets. A case study in pavement preservation applied to the New York State Thruway is presented. This research makes contributions to synthesizing uncertain information involved in the decision processes of preserving civil infrastructure. In particular, the case study exemplifies the benefits of using fuzzy relations to identify feasible treatment options.

Language: en

Keywords

Decision making; Pavements; Highway bridges; Fuzzy sets; Reliability; Graph theory; Computational methods; Failure analysis