The single biggest challenge facing municipalities today is a shortage of funds and labor for upgrading and expanding aging infrastructure. This continued lack of funding impairs the municipalities ability to maintain desired levels of service. Over the last decade, many Canadian municipalities have faced pressures of increasing complexity in infrastructure asset management decision-making which can be partly attributed to cost escalation, increasing service demand and interdependencies between networks. The goal of this research is to develop the framework for Asset Levels of Service (ALOS)-based decision support systems for municipal infrastructure network investment. The proposed framework is based on the fact that ALOS should be one of the main criteria for municipal infrastructure maintenance, repair and rehabilitation (MR&R). Since ALOS is based on qualitative and quantitative parameters, the use of ALOS in municipal infrastructure MR&R decisions will result in improved funding allocation. Secondary parameters used for municipal infrastructure investment decision making in the proposed framework are the physical deterioration of assets, future growth and the impact on the dependent infrastructure network. The proposed framework focuses on funding allocation for the MR&R of municipal networks. The framework is applicable to municipal infrastructure networks, excluding the other assets such as buildings, parks, etc. Application of the proposed framework is demonstrated by its implementation in the case of urban roads. Implementation is carried out in four phases. Phase I involves the quantification of ALOS for urban roads. Quantification of ALOS for urban roads has various challenges such as multiple users and interdependencies of levels of services between various users. An Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to quantify ALOS. Phase II involves the determination of a multiattribute utility function for investment decision. Calculated multiattribute utility of investment decision is used in the multiobjective optimization model in Phase III. In Phase IV, the proposed methodology is incorporated into a computer application called OPTIsys (OPTImum Infrastructure SYStems). OPTIsys will facilitate MR&R decision making based on fully integrated considerations of ALOS, future demand and network interdependencies. Stakeholders benefiting from OPTIsys include the general public, asset-managers, infrastructure departments and municipal councils. OPTIsys will enable infrastructure departments to maintain the operational capability of the network in compliance with the targeted levels of service. Overall, municipalities will be able to reduce the infrastructure deficit while maximizing economic returns. / Construction Engineering and Management

The deregulation of the trucking industry in the mid-1980s resulted in the growth of commercial vehicles not only in number, but also in weight, size and dimension. As a result, road agencies are finding their road networks being subjected to commercial vehicle load spectra greater than those initially projected. The augmented load spectra, combined with the aged state of many in-service roads, are resulting in the accelerated deterioration of our roadway infrastructure. Although much empirical evidence exists regarding the performance of rural pavements subjected to various types of loading, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the operation of commercial vehicles within the urban environment and their ensuing effects on urban roads. Urban municipalities are therefore beginning to realize the importance of identifying and quantifying the effects of commercial vehicle operations (CVO) on urban road assets, traffic congestion and motorist safety.<p> Due to the limitations of conventional Equivalent Single Axle Loads (ESALs) when applied to urban pavements, this research aimed to investigate commercial vehicle load equivalencies for various classes of urban roadway in the City of Saskatoon. Urban load equivalencies were created by combining a traffic load spectra from a typical freeway in the City of Saskatoon with structural deformation and damage responses measured across several urban roadways. This established a framework for calculating the responses incurred from commercial vehicle loading across different types of urban roads. Based on the results of the mechanistic-empirical urban load equivalency analysis performed in this research, urban ESAL factors (ESALFs) for local-industrial roadways were found to range from 50 percent less than to 250 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. Urban arterial ESALFs ranged from 20 percent to 260 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. The primary response-based ESALFs for urban local and collector roadways ranged from 150 to 700 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. The large range in mechanistic-empirical ESALFs across urban road classes indicated that typical urban roadways are much more sensitive to heavy vehicle loads than their rural highway counterparts. In a test urban traffic application, it was calculated that a typical low floor transit vehicle was capable of producing loads ranging from a minimum of nine ESALs on urban local-industrial roadways to a maximum of 140 ESALs on urban local and collector roadways.

The City of Winnipeg, located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, has over 240 km of natural riverbank property. The increased frequency and magnitude of flooding along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers over the past decade appears to have influenced the number of slope failures along riverbank property, resulting in the loss of both public green space and privately owned land. The loss of private and public property adjacent to the river has led to the loss of valuable real estate and public parkland amenities. To ensure that riverbank property is preserved for future generations, the City of Winnipeg wants to increase the stability of certain reaches of publicly owned riverbank property along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that are prone to slope movements. Extensive research has been conducted on slope stability problems in the Winnipeg area, but a transparent prioritization procedure for the remediation of riverbank stability problems has not existed. Therefore, a Riverbank Asset Management System (RAMS) was developed for publicly owned riverbank property to prioritize riverbank slope stability problems along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The RAMS provides the City of Winnipeg with a rational approach for determining risk levels for specific reaches of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The calculated risk levels allow the City to develop recommended response levels for slope stability remediation projects in a fiscally responsible manner with minimal personal and political influences. This system permits the City to facilitate timely and periodic reviews of priority sites as riverbank conditions and input parameters change. / May 2009

Traditional Canadian pavement construction contracts provide detailed specifications for the work that needs to be carried out. This is the case for both maintenance and rehabilitation contracts. However, for many road agencies around the world, this traditional way of contracting had shortcomings. These agencies have been proactive in changing their contracts to maintain the road networks while reducing the cost. The challenge of maintaining the road networks to the highest possible condition while investing the minimal amount of money has promoted innovative contracting approaches. Furthermore, road agencies have increased the private sector involvement through warranty contracts. According to road agencies around the world, there has been a movement over the last two decades towards Performance Based Contracts (PBCs); a long term warranty contract. In PBCs, the client agency specifies certain clearly defined minimal performance measures to be met or exceeded during the contract period and payments are explicitly linked to the contractor successfully meeting or exceeding those performance measures. Therefore, the PBC maintenance and rehabilitation selection differs significantly from that of traditional asset management contracts and more complex due to the pavement deterioration process and probability of failure to achieve the specified level of service for various performance measures along the contract period. This thesis involves the development of a novel framework that facilitates the selection of maintenance and rehabilitation activities for pavement assets under PBCs. The framework consists of two phases. Phase-One, called the Initial Program, uses historical data, performance modeling, and optimization to establish and select the maintenance and rehabilitation program for the bidding stage. Phase-Two, called Project Asset Management, is implemented after the contract is awarded. This phase uses the contract performance monitoring data and the cost estimate from Phase-One as a baseline budget to update and validate the established program through performance modeling and optimization. A case study using data from the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) second generation Pavement Management System (PMS2) is used to illustrate the framework.

The deregulation of the trucking industry in the mid-1980s resulted in the growth of commercial vehicles not only in number, but also in weight, size and dimension. As a result, road agencies are finding their road networks being subjected to commercial vehicle load spectra greater than those initially projected. The augmented load spectra, combined with the aged state of many in-service roads, are resulting in the accelerated deterioration of our roadway infrastructure. Although much empirical evidence exists regarding the performance of rural pavements subjected to various types of loading, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the operation of commercial vehicles within the urban environment and their ensuing effects on urban roads. Urban municipalities are therefore beginning to realize the importance of identifying and quantifying the effects of commercial vehicle operations (CVO) on urban road assets, traffic congestion and motorist safety.<p> Due to the limitations of conventional Equivalent Single Axle Loads (ESALs) when applied to urban pavements, this research aimed to investigate commercial vehicle load equivalencies for various classes of urban roadway in the City of Saskatoon. Urban load equivalencies were created by combining a traffic load spectra from a typical freeway in the City of Saskatoon with structural deformation and damage responses measured across several urban roadways. This established a framework for calculating the responses incurred from commercial vehicle loading across different types of urban roads. Based on the results of the mechanistic-empirical urban load equivalency analysis performed in this research, urban ESAL factors (ESALFs) for local-industrial roadways were found to range from 50 percent less than to 250 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. Urban arterial ESALFs ranged from 20 percent to 260 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. The primary response-based ESALFs for urban local and collector roadways ranged from 150 to 700 percent greater than conventional load equivalencies. The large range in mechanistic-empirical ESALFs across urban road classes indicated that typical urban roadways are much more sensitive to heavy vehicle loads than their rural highway counterparts. In a test urban traffic application, it was calculated that a typical low floor transit vehicle was capable of producing loads ranging from a minimum of nine ESALs on urban local-industrial roadways to a maximum of 140 ESALs on urban local and collector roadways.

A growing number of transportation agencies have begun to manage selected ancillary transportation assets systematically--culverts, guardrails, pavement markings, sidewalks and curbs, street lighting, traffic signals, traffic signs, utilities and manholes, earth retaining structures, and environmental mitigation features. Given prevailing budget limitations, several agencies are interested in prioritizing these assets for inclusion in their existing management systems. This paper discusses critical elements of a framework for assessing the risks, benefits and costs of incorporating ancillary assets in existing Transportation Asset Management programs. The paper reviews some basic elements of a risk theory, examines risk applications in transportation asset management, water mains, and storm water management, and identifies the basic elements of a risk-benefit-cost framework for prioritizing ancillary assets for management. These elements can be used as a basis for developing a decision analysis framework to make a business case for the formal management of ancillary transportation assets and to prioritize them for inclusion in existing Transportation Asset Management programs. Using these elements, we have developed a risk ranking model that can be used by transportation officials to prioritize their ancillary asset classes for management. A demonstration of the model is presented in this paper to show its effectiveness. The study concludes that tracking and documentation of ancillary transportation asset failures would help agencies better understand the risks associated with failure. Tracking and documenting the failures of ancillary transportation assets would also help in identifying trends/probability of failure as well as quantifying the consequences associated with these failures. Such information could also be used to estimate risk factors to prioritize individual asset classes for inclusion in existing management systems.

In 2012, federal legislation introduced a requirement for formal transportation asset management (TAM) in transportation agencies. The law specifically requires agencies to develop TAM plans and implement TAM programs in their decision-making processes. The history of national policy development for (TAM) and research in policy implementation and organizational theory have shown that program sustainment is not easily achieved. Often, agencies can respond to this kind of legislative mandate with ineffective efforts to achieve legitimacy that reduce the likelihood for the program to be sustained in the long-term. This presents a challenge because without sustainment, the benefits of TAM, which are mostly long-term, may not be fully realized. The objective of this work was to develop a conceptual framework to guide transportation agencies to review their TAM implementation practices and identify opportunities to enhance long-term program sustainment. The conceptual basis for the framework comes from a synthesis of transportation, policy and program implementation, and change management literature, supported by insight from a panel of practitioner and academic experts. The TAM Implementation Review Framework (TIRF) incorporates seven themes of implementation factors that can promote sustainment of TAM practices impacting the social, organizational, and programmatic elements of implementation. The TIRF was applied in case studies to review the TAM implementation processes of three Departments of Transportation (DOTs) resulting in different kinds of information on how implementation activities address factors related to program sustainment. These results can steer future implementation activities in DOTs towards increased probabilities of achieving long-term program sustainment. The primary contributions of this work lie in the development of the conceptual framework and approach to enhance TAM implementation by emphasizing the people and organizational elements of TAM, alongside with the technical. In practice, the TIRF offers agencies a review and planning tool to support TAM implementation decision making and to promote program sustainment. The output is being proposed as a foundational element in the development of an evidence-based catalog of TAM implementation strategies. This can facilitate inter-agency knowledge sharing by providing a platform for systematic documentation of implementation experiences to support broader adoption of strategies that can contribute to increased program sustainment.

Η δημιουργία, παρουσίαση και ανταλλαγή της πληροφορίας όπως, επίσης, και η συλλογή, οργάνωση και αποθήκευση των μέσων πληροφορίας είναι εργασίες που επιτελούνται από τον άνθρωπο από τον καιρό της ύπαρξής του. Αυτό που καθιστά το πρόβλημα μεγαλύτερο και δυσκολότερο για την σημερινή κοινωνία της πληροφορίας είναι η διαχείριση της ποσότητας της πληροφορίας σε ψηφιακή μορφή (ψηφιακό περιεχόμενο), η ταχύτητα με την οποία αναπαράγεται και οι τρόποι με τους οποίους παρουσιάζεται, ανταλλάσσεται, οργανώνεται και αποθηκεύεται. Η εδραίωση του Παγκόσμιου Ιστού έχει επηρεάσει δραματικά όλες αυτές τις δραστηριότητες παρέχοντάς μας νέα εργαλεία και μορφές διαχείρισης και διάθεσης ψηφιακού υλικού. Τόσο η δημιουργία ψηφιακού περιεχομένου από έναν συνεχώς αυξανόμενο αριθμό αναλογικών και ψηφιακών πηγών όσο και η ανάγκη αναπαράστασής του σε μια ατέλειωτη λίστα διαφορετικών μορφών και τύπων έχουν μεταβάλλει σε πολύ μεγάλο βαθμό τους τρόπους της διαχείρισής του. Στις μέρες μας, οργανισμοί με μεγάλο όγκο ψηφιακού υλικού προβάλλουν και διανέμουν το υλικό τους μέσω του Παγκόσμιου Ιστού εμπλουτίζοντας και προεκτείνοντας τις ηλεκτρονικές τους υπηρεσίες και εφαρμογές αξιοποιώντας τα δίκτυα υπολογιστών. Κάτι τέτοιο απαιτεί την ολοκλήρωση εξειδικευμένων πληροφοριακών συστημάτων στην επιχειρησιακή λογική ενός οργανισμού καθώς και την ορθή του χρήση και υποστήριξη από ειδικό προσωπικό. Τα συστήματα αυτά αποτελούν έναν καθοριστικό παράγοντα για τη μελλοντική ανάπτυξη ενός οργανισμού ενώ εγγυώνται και διασφαλίζουν τις οικονομικές του επενδύσεις. Ωστόσο, ο Παγκόσμιος Ιστός αποτελεί ένα ιδιαίτερα εχθρικό περιβάλλον όσον αφορά θέματα ασφάλειας, πλήττοντας άμεσα την εμπορική (ή μη) εκμετάλλευση του διακινούμενου ψηφιακού περιεχομένου. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, οι οργανισμοί οφείλουν να αντιμετωπίσουν όλες εκείνες τις προκλήσεις που προέρχονται από τα ανοιχτά θέματα ασφάλειας του Διαδικτύου ακριβώς επειδή αυτά μπορούν να προκαλέσουν απώλειες μεγάλου όγκου δεδομένων, να οδηγήσουν σε οικονομική καταστροφή ή/και να αμαυρώσουν το κύρος και την αξιοπιστία του οργανισμού προς το ευρύ κοινό. Στόχος της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η ενδελεχής παρουσίαση πληροφοριακών Συστημάτων Διαχείρισης Ψηφιακών Αντικειμένων (Digital Asset Management Systems – DAMS). Στο 1ο από τα 2 μέρη της, παρουσιάζουμε την αρχιτεκτονική τέτοιων συστημάτων, τις υποδομές πάνω στις οποίες στηρίζονται και υλοποιούνται, τις υπηρεσίες και εφαρμογές που παρέχουν καθώς και τους τρόπους ολοκλήρωσής τους με άλλα πληροφοριακά συστήματα καθώς και με το Διαδίκτυο. Στο 2ο μέρος περιγράφουμε το λεπτομερή σχεδιασμό και την υλοποίηση ενός ανθεκτικού αρχιτεκτονικού μοντέλου ασφάλειας για Internet-based DAMS. Αναπτύσσουμε τις βασικές λειτουργικές προδιαγραφές και απαιτήσεις ασφάλειας με βάση τις οποίες κάναμε το σχεδιασμό. Επιπλέον, περιγράφουμε όλες εκείνες τις κρυπτογραφικές αρχές και τεχνολογίες που χρησιμοποιούμε για να πετύχουμε ασφάλεια στα διαχειριζόμενα δεδομένα και ασφαλή αλληλεπίδραση χρηστών με το μοντέλο μας σε διαδικτυακά συνεργατικά περιβάλλοντα. Τέλος, παρέχουμε μια υλοποίηση ενός πρωτοτύπου για Internet-based DAMS το οποίο στηρίζεται πάνω στο αρχιτεκτονικό μας μοντέλο και αναλύουμε όλα τα τεχνικά ζητήματα που ανακύπτουν. / Information creation, presentation and exchange, but also the collection, organization and storage of information carriers, is an old craft. What makes the problem different in today's information society is the amount of information in digital form (digital content) that has to be handled, the speed at which it is produced and the ways that it is presented, exchanged, organized and stored. The advent of the World Wide Web has tremendously affected all these activities, giving us new tools and ways for harnessing digital material. Its creation from an ever-increasing number of analog and digital sources and the need for representing it into an endless list of different types and formats influences dramatically the ways of its management. Nowadays, rich-media organizations tend to exhibit and distribute their material over Internet by extending their electronic services and applications into computer networks. This task requires specialized information systems and also skilled staff to use, maintain and integrate them into the organization's business logic. Adoption of such systems is a critical factor for future economic growth and return on investment (ROI). However, Internet increases the vulnerability of digital content commercial (or not) exploitation since it is a possibly hostile environment. In any case, organizations have to deal with all the open security challenges that can cause huge data and financial losses, harm their reputation and strictly affect people's trust on them. In the present work we describe the design and implementation of a secure and robust architectural model for digital asset management. Usage and exploitation of the World Wide Web is a critical requirement for a series of administrative tasks such as collecting, managing and distributing valuable assets. Our model addresses a list of fundamental operational and security requirements. It utilizes a number of cryptographic primitives and techniques that provide data safety and secure user interaction on especially demanding on-line collaboration environments. We provide a reference implementation of our architectural model and discuss the technical issues. It is designed as a standalone solution but it can be flexibly adapted in broader management infrastructures as well as existing DAMS platforms.

Transportation Asset Management (TAM) systems are in use at many transportation agencies both in the United States and around the world. These asset management systems serve as strategic resource allocation frameworks and their degree of implementation and maturity varies. Climatic change, with its potentially adverse impacts on both the built and natural environments, has become of increasing concern around the globe. Given the uncertainties associated with changing climatic conditions, transportation agency stakeholders utilize risk-based decision-making approaches to identify climate change impacts that pose the greatest risk to transportation infrastructure assets. In conjunction with criticality assessments, emerging conceptual frameworks seek to identify higher-risk infrastructure assets, which are both critical to system operations and vulnerable to potential climate change impacts, through standalone study efforts. This research develops a risk-oriented decision-making framework to identify vulnerable, higher-risk transportation infrastructure assets within the context of existing transportation asset management systems. The framework assesses the relative maturity of an agency’s transportation asset management system and provides guidance as to how an agency’s existing tools and processes can be used to incorporate climate change considerations. This risk-based decision-making framework is applied to three case studies: one at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, another at the Metropolitan Planning Commission in Savannah – Chatham County, and a statewide case study at the Georgia Department of Transportation. The results of this research demonstrate that readily-available climate projection data can be analyzed and displayed geospatially so that the potential impacts of climatic change on transportation infrastructure can be determined for specific geographic regions. In addition, existing roadway and bridge infrastructure datasets can also be displayed geospatially. The framework uses geospatially-referenced roadway and bridge asset data and multi-criteria decision analysis procedures to develop and visually display criticality scores. Overlaying climate projection data and criticality data helps identify higher-risk transportation infrastructure assets. This research demonstrates that climate change considerations can be effectively incorporated in existing decision-making processes at various levels of maturity of formal TAM systems, making this more broadly accessible to agencies and communities with potential climate hazards.

No description available.