Proposed Guideline for Reliability-Based Bridge Inspection Practices

This report presents a proposed guideline for reliability-based bridge inspection practices and provides two case studies of the application of the proposed Guideline. The guideline describes a methodology to develop a risk-based approach for determining the bridge inspection interval according to the requirements in the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21)” legislation. The goal of the methodology is to improve the safety and reliability of bridges by focusing inspection efforts where most needed and optimizing the use of resources. The report includes two parts: Part I—Proposed Guideline for Reliability-Based Bridge Inspection Practices and Part II—Final Research Report: Developing Reliability-Based Inspection Practices that documents the entire research effort. The material in this report will be of immediate interest to bridge engineers.