Multistep - Multistep Repair

Title: Multistep - Multistep Repair

Principal investigator: Nuno Sousa

Research team: João  Coutinho Rodrigues, John Current

Dates start/end: 10-2016 / 03-2018

Synopsis

Today’s urban landscape is populated by many infrastructures supporting city life. Some of these degrade quickly and require frequent repairs, while others, such as buildings, large scale structures, sidewalks, etc. degrade more slowly, i.e. have a longer durability cycle. Undertaking maintenance on the latter kind of urban infrastructures requires a well thought-out plan, as these actions are typically expensive, resource-intensive works and have long-lasting effects. It therefore becomes important to develop managerial tools for planning interventions that take into account both (1) the benefits that can be given to the population from servicing the infrastructures; and (2) the costs of doing so. 

Given the motivation above, it is the objective of this project to devise and thoroughly test a multicriteria model for the important urban engineering problem of planning interventions on large, multiple feature urban infrastructures that degrade slowly. The model will aim at maximizing benefits to the population and minimizing costs, while taking into account real-life factors such as e.g. possible social synergies of actions undertaken, concomitance of assets and volume discounts.