Optimal Sampling of Infrastructure Condition: Methodology and NumericalEvaluation

This paper describes how infrastructure management is the process through which inspection, maintenance, and rehabilitation decisions are made to minimize total life-cycle cost. Condition measurement, forecasting, and spatial sampling introduce uncertainty into the process. The first two uncertainties are captured in the infrastructure management literature. However, the third has not been recognized and quantified. Therefore, this study focuses on quantifying the spatial sampling uncertainty and investigates its effect on the expected minimum life-cycle cost. Moreover, evaluation measures are defined to assess the values of the LMDPSS framework, namely incorporating uncertainty due to spatial sampling and selecting the sample size optimally.