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AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research working towards building an Africa-owned open scholarly repository; a knowledge commons of African scholarly works. We are partnering with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline to present their research findings and connect with other researchers – on the African continent and globally. It is our aim to promote discoverability of African research output according to sfDORA : https://sfdora.org/read/ FAIR principles: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism: https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/en To contextualize the above to the African scholarly community we have postulated 10 African Principles for Open Access in Scholarly Communication: https://info.africarxiv.org/african-oa-principles/

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Nowadays, value engineering (VE) has become an essential application in many fields, especially structural engineering. Bridges normally experience local damages throughout their service life, whether due to natural hazards, accidents, or harsh environmental conditions. These damages can compromise the integrity of the structure based on their severity. This paper aims to develop a decision support system (DSS) that selects the most optimal repair technique for girders of concrete bridges, considering different factors such as financial, technical, and logistical factors. The proposed DSS is developed by integrating the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and VE to specify the optimum repair technique. Furthermore, the most common repair techniques are considered in this research, such as repairing using Steel plates, sheets of glass fiber reinforced polymers (GFRPs), laminates of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs), external pre-stressing cables, and concrete jackets. The developed (DSS) was presented graphically as a map for the optimum repairing technique for certain (span, span/depth) combinations. Finally, the DSS was verified using collected case studies from the literature and showed good matching within the considered range of girder’s dimensions.