Many concrete structures can be considered as large parts of engineering systems. For these, realistic modelling of deterioration and the planning of inspection and maintenance activities requires explicit consideration of the interdependencies among the individual elements of the structure. Ageing of the infrastructure has become increasingly recognized by engineers and decision makers as being important, yet relatively few research projects have addressed this topic to date. The present paper provides an overview of the decision problems related to the planning of inspection, monitoring and maintenance activities in large engineering systems. This is followed by the presentation of a model framework for the representation of spatial and temporal variability of deterioration, illustrated by consideration of chloride-induced corrosion of the reinforcement in concrete structures. The framework is computationally highly efficient and facilitates the consistent, quantitative modelling of the risks from deterioration for the entire system at all points in time. Finally, it is demonstrated how the framework can be applied to optimize the planning of inspection and maintenance activities for large concrete structures.

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