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PROJECT DETAILS

Author(s)
Dr. Anil Agrawal
Publication Year
Publication Type

The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) maintains an inventory of over 17,000 highway bridges across the state. As per New York State’s Uniform Code of Bridge Inspections, all bridges in New York State are inspected biennially, or more often as necessary. Bridge inspectors are required to assign a condition rating for up to 47 structural elements of each bridge, including 25 components of each span of a bridge, in addition to the general components common to all bridges based on visual inspection of these elements. The bridge condition rating scale ranges from 7 to 1, 7 being new and 1 being in failed condition. In addition to this, ratings 8 and 9 are assigned to cases “not applicable” and “condition and/or existence unknown”. The objectives of this research have been to (1) conduct a detailed evaluation of the consistency of inspection ratings, and (2) provide recommendations for improvements to bridge inspection procedures and training to improve consistency, whenever possible.