Societal and reliability aspects of bridge management in the Netherlands

The paper describes the decision-theoretic approach that is used for bridge management in the Netherlands to obtain optimal investment and maintenance decisions. First, a societal perspective of bridge management and safety is sketched. Next, the important issues that govern the decision-making are described: technical requirements with an emphasis on structural safety, optimising maintenance to achieve lowest life-cycle costs, and the physical and statistical models of structural behaviour and deterioration processes. Finally, the results are evaluated in a societal perspective.