Developing an Optimization Model for Life-Cycle Hydraulic Facilities Management

Hydraulic facilities include a wide range of infrastructures that serve important economic, social and environmental purposes. Deterioration of hydraulic facilities presents great financial and technical challenges for governments at all levels. This paper proposes a mathematical model for hydraulic facilities management by integrating a condition index system, facilities deterioration mechanism, and the Markovian decision process. In addition, the impacts of different inspection strategies in terms of accuracy and cost are addressed. The objective is to minimize the life-cycle cost of hydraulic structures by optimizing facilities management actions to be taken over a long term horizon under functional requirements. A computational methodology is provided for this model.