Resilient Geotechnical Infrastructure Asset Management: Fid-Bau Portal

Resilient Geotechnical Infrastructure Asset Management

Shah, Janvi / Jefferson, Ian / Ghataora, Gurmel / Hunt, Dexter

The concept of sustainability and resilience has gained significant importance in recent years in the infrastructure engineering industry. Key challenges currently faced by the infrastructure industry worldwide include obsolescence, growing demands, climate change, increased vulnerability, demand for multifunctionality, and growing interdependencies among different asset types. With the recent changes in the economic, social, and environmental scenarios, an increasing pressure exists to develop robust, flexible, and multifunctional asset management solutions that not only suit the needs of the present, but also are safe, secure, and resilient to what the future may hold. Ultimately all infrastructure assets interact with the ground, and their integrity relies substantially on the performance of geotechnical assets, thus making geotechnical asset management a critical starting point in future proofing the infrastructure network. The paper highlights the need to devise resilient asset management solutions. The paper focuses on two transport modes, namely highways and railways, and aims to present an asset management framework that will test the resiliency of current geotechnical solutions to the plausible conditions of the future. The proposed asset management framework will enable strategic decision makers to evaluate the resilience potential of proposed geotechnical asset management solutions in light of future conditions with varying socioeconomic and environmental patterns.