Application of Gamma Process for Building Deterioration Prediction: Fid-Bau Portal

Application of Gamma Process for Building Deterioration Prediction

Edirisinghe, Ruwini / Setunge, Sujeeva / Zhang, Guomin

Abstract

Deterioration trends derived using discrete condition data are commonly used in management of civil infrastructure assets. However, the high variability of condition data often makes the derivation of deterministic models difficult and unreliable. Therefore, reliability-based methods such as Markov chain have been used to establish trends using highly variable condition data. Although these methods have been explored in assets such as bridges and roads, the use of reliability-based methods in deterioration prediction of buildings is less common. The second-largest class of infrastructure assets owned by the local governments in Australia is community buildings. Because most existing community buildings are maturing, the local government agencies seek more reliable asset management strategies. Physical condition–based forecasting is a major component of such asset management approaches. This paper presents the development of a reliability-based methodology for the deterioration prediction of community buildings. The gamma process is considered to be an appropriate approach for predicting building element deterioration because of the associated temporal variability of degradation. The gamma deterioration process presented in this paper is a stochastic process with independent nonnegative increments having a gamma distribution with an identical scale parameter. Building inspection data from one of the local governments in Victoria are used in the model. Further, the paper discusses the analysis of the data and practical application.