Characteristics of Bridge Management Systems

This circular contains the papers presented at the Seventh Conference on Bridge Management. The objective of the Conference was to provide a forum for the exchange of information about the state-of-the-art in bridge management support systems. The papers are grouped into four categories: Bridge Management Decision Support Process; National and Provincial Bridge Management Systems; State and Local Approaches to Bridge Management; and Development and Implementation Issues in Bridge Management Systems. The first category contains three papers that describe the basic components of the bridge management support process: data needs and collection, data analysis, and decision support. The second category includes four papers that describe the two U.S. national systems, Pontis and BRIDGIT, followed by examinations of Denmark's bridge management system (BMS) and Ontario's project BMS. The third category has seven papers; the first five describe systems in Alabama, Connecticut, Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and the last two papers provide a city's and a county's view of the bridge management process. The fourth category contains four papers. The first describes a method for developing National Bridge Inventory (NBI) condition ratings from a BMS, the second and third papers address issues involved in user costs, and the last paper examines the future prospects for bridge management.