Journal of Infrastructure Systems

The publication of Silent Spring in 1962 heralded the beginning of the modern environmental movement. America in Ruins , published in 1981, attempted to draw attention to the “infrastructure crisis” but did not generate the same level of public support. This paper compares and contrasts the issues presented in these two books and reviews their respective roles in publicizing issues related to the natural and built environments. The public perception of crisis and the related public policies are also explored in the context of publications and legislation related to Silent Spring and America in Ruins . A discussion of the differences and similarities focuses on the importance of future directions rather than addressing the question, “Was there an infrastructure crisis?” Issues posed for future investigation include establishing priorities between increased financing and improving the use of existing resources and examining the link between the natural and built environments as it relates to sustainability. Lessons that may be derived from an analysis of the environmental and infrastructure crises include recognizing the importance of broad-based support and relating the issues to the public's fear for personal health and safety.

Vast sums are spent for the upkeep of the nation's public facilities. The need to contain maintenance costs, which grow as the physical infrastructure ages, is driving the development and use of new technologies. For underground utilities, trenchless technologies offer practical alternatives to open-cut methods for replacing or fixing existing lines. However, data on costs and performance of these new technologies are scarce, and good data are required for effective infrastructure-management decisions. This paper presents an initial cost and performance evaluation of three new sewer spot-repair methods and explains how the approach to their evaluation applies to other mainenance technologies. All three spot-repair techniques evaluated were significantly less expensive than conventional open-cut repairs. In addition, the spot-repair techniques reduce indirect costs such as materials disposal and social costs such as traffic delays. However, total life-cycle costs are sensitive to the useful life of the repair for which very little data are available. Test results reported here indicate that material properties and repair performance differ significantly between the repair methods. Recommendations are made for further studies.

An investigation into the long-term structural performance of pipe rehabilitation products, specifically cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) and fold-and-formed pipe (FFP), was sponsored by the joint Corps of Engineers and industry Construction Productivity Advancement Research (CPAR) program. The overall objective of the research was to evaluate the long-term structural behavior of CIPP and FFP liner products made by different manufacturers when subjected to external hydrostatic pressure. A test program was designed to simulate the sustained hydrostatic loading that would be experienced by liners constrained in partially deteriorated gravity sewer pipes. Test results indicate that the viscoelastic behavior of the plastics leads to buckling of the liners under significantly lower pressures as the load is sustained over longer periods of time. A regression analyses of the test data extrapolated beyond the 10,000-h test period, shows that the estimated long-term buckling pressure is generally greater than that currently predicted by industry participants when using the design considerations in ASTM F 1216-93. Test results suggest that additional research and evaluation may lead to more efficient designs for CIPP and FFP systems. The results of this research are expected to have a significant impact on the design and analysis of rehabilitation systems for existing pipelines.

Like other categories of the nation's infrastructure, offshore platforms are aging, and present a problem to owners and regulators with regard to the tracking of vital information and the management of risk. A prototype information management system for California's offshore platforms, the California Coastal Platform Information Management System, is presented. The system addresses the problems of both information management and risk management in an easy-to-use PC-based software package. The system incorporates level 1 analyses for the assessment of structural integrity, failure consequences, and risk. It also incorporates platform data-management features for tracking structure information as well as advanced environmental data management features for the probabilistic description of wind, current, wave, and seismic events.

Motivated by the management system requirement of the Intermodal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act, efforts are being made toward expanding an existing pavement management system (PMS) into a more comprehensive infrastructure management system (IMS) in a number of small public agencies in the nation. During this conversion process, however, it is very important to recognize the differences among various infrastructure facilities as well as their common characteristics. The quality of service of each infrastructure type to the public should be evaluated for the efficient allocation of the limited infrastructure budget recognizing their interactive relationships. The most critical issues that should be addressed before expanding a PMS into an IMS are discussed in this paper: relative benefits of different types, universal location referencing system, consistent condition evaluation, transformation of data into decisions, and automated mapping. The IMS development and implementation experiences are then illustrated using an actual application for a small town in Canada.