An approach to modelling concrete bridge condition deterioration using a statistical causal relationship based on inspection data

Abstract

While physical models of concrete structures may give a fundamental understanding of structural deterioration mechanisms, their application is more or less limited in reflecting actual scenarios as a result of inevitable theoretical assumptions, whereby it is often difficult to cover complex structural behaviour and environment in the real world. Uncertainties and fuzziness, along with complexity, add more difficulty to the estimation of structural deterioration by physical models, which are typically described by quantitative mathematical equations. To complement physical models, an approach based on a statistical causal relationship, combining logics and statistics, is established for mode..