Artificial Neural Network Model of Bridge Deterioration

Ying-Hua Huang1

Abstract: Accurate prediction of bridge condition is essential for the planning of maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation. An examination
of the assumptions 共for example, maintenance independency兲 of the existing Markovian model reveals possible limitations in its ability to
adequately model the procession of deterioration for these purposes. This study uses statistical analysis to identify significant factors
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influencing the deterioration and develops an application model for estimating the future condition of bridges. Based on data derived from
historical maintenance and inspection of concrete decks in Wisconsin, this study identifies 11 significant factors and develops an artificial
neural network 共ANN兲 model to predict associated deterioration. An analysis of the application of ANN finds that it performs well when
modeling deck deterioration in terms of pattern classification. The developed model has the capacity to accurately predict the condition of
bridge decks and therefore provide pertinent information for maintenance planning and decision making at both the project level and the
network level.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲CF.1943-5509.0000124
CE Database subject headings: Bridges; Deterioration; Predictions; Neural networks.
Author keywords: Bridges; Deterioration; Predictions; Neural networks.

Introduction
Transportation agencies run bridge management systems 共BMS兲
for the maintenance of bridges in order to ensure public safety.
Inspection of the bridges yields data that they use to develop
deterioration models in order to estimate the future bridge condi-
tion for timely planning of maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation.
The success of BMS depends on its ability to estimate future
conditions accurately 共Kleywegt and Sinha 1994; Madanat et al.
1995; Thompson et al. 1998兲. Several BMSs 共for example, Pontis
and BRIDGIT兲 have used Markovian transition probabilities in
deterioration models to estimate the future conditions of bridge
elements. The underlying assumption of the Markov chain is that
at any given state of the process the future states are independent
of the past 共Kleywegt and Sinha 1994兲. Although a number of
researchers use Markovian approach to help decisions in mainte-
nance 共Tao et al. 1994; Jha and Abdullah 2006; Morcous 2006兲,
many researchers have questioned the realism of this assumption
and by implication the ability of the Markovian approach to
model bridge deterioration for purposes of the allocation of re-
sources 共Busa et al. 1985; Madanat et al. 1997; Mauch and
Madanat 2001; Frangopol et al. 2001; Robelin and Madanat
2007兲.
In order to expose the weaknesses of the Markov chain ap-
proach this study uses statistical analysis to identify significant
factors influencing the deterioration and develops an application
model for estimating the future condition of bridges. Most bridges
become unserviceable because of deterioration of the deck 共Cady
1
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Construction Engineering, National
Yunlin Univ. of Science and Technology, Douliou, Yunlin 64002, Taiwan.
E-mail: huangyh@yuntech.edu.tw
Note. This manuscript was submitted on August 26, 2009; approved
on January 30, 2010; published online on November 15, 2010. Discussion
period open until May 1, 2011; separate discussions must be submitted
for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Performance
of Constructed Facilities, Vol. 24, No. 6, December 1, 2010. ©ASCE,
ISSN 0887-3828/2010/6-597–602/$25.00.
and Weyers 1992; Bettigole and Robison 1997; Kirkpatrick et al.
2002; Scott et al. 2003兲. This paper ignores all other elements and
identifies significant factors influencing bridge deck deterioration
by using the relevant historical inspection and inventory data and
records of maintenance. An artificial neural network 共ANN兲
model for predicting bridge deck deterioration is developed to
model the possible nonlinear relationships between the observed
condition and the identified factors. Bridge managers using this
ANN model can, potentially, predict the condition of individual
decks and timely specify information pertinent to maintenance
needs.
Bridge Deterioration Modeling
Along with the development of BMS, researchers contrived vari-
ous deterioration models to improve the bridge management de-
cision processes. Madanat et al. 共1997兲 introduced an ordered
probit analysis to develop an incremental and discrete deteriora-
tion model where the difference in observed ratings is an indicator
of the underlying latent deterioration. Mauch and Madanat 共2001兲
developed a semiparametric hazard rate model to predict times
between changes in the condition of concrete bridge decks. They
concluded that age and other explanatory variables, such as aver-
age daily traffic 共ADT兲, contribute to bridge deck deterioration.
They also concluded that because the Indiana Bridge Inventory
database did not contain all relevant data, certain important cova-
riants, for example, records of maintenance of bridge decks, were
not included in the model. Robelin and Madanat 共2007兲 formu-
lated a realistic historical model of bridge deck deterioration by
using a Markov chain while retaining aspects of the history,
namely, deterioration and maintenance, as part of the model to
overcome the limitations of the existing Markovian models.
Some researchers modeled bridge deterioration at project
level. Hyman et al. 共1983兲 showed that the condition is related to
the age of the bridge through a piecewise linear regression model.
Busa et al. 共1985兲 used linear regression to model bridge deterio-

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 ration and concluded that age and ADT are two important vari-
ables. West et al. 共1989兲 used a nonexponential model to represent
the relationship between the condition of the bridge element and
age. Babaei et al. 共1996兲 defined a performance index and intro-
duced a procedure to capture the performance of concrete decks.
In their procedure, a performance index was determined using the
age of the concrete, areas spalled and areas delaminated ex-
pressed as percentages of the total, and measures of the chloride
content both at the concrete surface and at the bar level. Fran-
gopol et al. 共2001兲 defined states of bridge reliability and pro-
posed a reliability based approach to bridge maintenance. In their
approach, a series of random variables with different distributions
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determined the performance of bridges.
Since the 1990s ANN has been applied as an alternative to
traditional methods in civil engineering fields such as structural
design, structural assessment, structural control, traffic engineer-
ing, and highway engineering 共for example, Mukherjee et al.
1996; Kim et al. 2000; Hung et al. 2000; Saito and Fan 2000;
Attoh-Okine 2001兲. ANN was likewise applied to bridge manage-
ment. Sobanjo 共1997兲 used the inspection records for 50 bridge
superstructures to model bridge deterioration with only the age of
bridge as an input, which he mapped to an output of a correspond-
ing bridge superstructure National Bridge Inventory 共NBI兲 condi-
tion rating. Rattanasuwan 共1998兲 derived NBI rating from the
common recognize element data in Pontis BMS. Arima et al.
共1999兲 estimated the causes of deterioration in steel bridges using
data obtained from inspections of the paint. This paper uses the
ANN approach to model deterioration of concrete decks while
treating the deck deterioration as a pattern classification problem.
In addition to the age of decks, more parameters are identified and
they are introduced to enhance the developed model.
ANN with BP-MLP Classifier
The ANN approach is an information-processing paradigm in-
spired by the way the densely interconnected, parallel structure of
the human brain processes information 共Aleksander and Morton
1990兲. It is usually applied to develop forecast models 共Arditi and
Tokdemir 1999兲. Among the computational models of neural net-
works proposed, back-propagation network, which is based on
fully connected, layered, feedforward networks, has been shown
to be theoretically sound 共Rumelhart et al. 1986a,b兲. It is the most
widely used computational model. It has demonstrated excellent
capability for various complex classification and prediction prob-
lems.
In this paper, pattern classification was performed to develop
the prediction model. Labels mark different classifications of
input patterns 共features兲. Let X be the feature space and C
= 兵c共i兲 , 1 ⬍ i ⬍ M其 be M class labels. A class label t共x兲 苸 C is as-
sumed for each x 苸 X. For the back-propagation approach
multilayer perceptron 共BP-MLP兲 classifier, the classification la-
bels are presented as target values during training process. Each
MLP output approximates the a posteriori probability P关c共i兲 兩 x兴,
which is the probability that t共x兲 = c共i兲 given the value of x.
Assuming that y共x兲 is assigned to be the ith output of MLP
and t共x兲 to be the corresponding target value 共0 or 1兲 during the
training, the error e2共t兲 is presented in Eq. 共1兲 where E
= instantaneous value
e2共t兲 = E兵储t共x兲 − y共x兲储2其 ⱖ E兵储E关t共x兲兩x兴 − y共x兲储2其 共1兲
As y共x兲 estimates P关c共i兲 兩 x兴, Eq. 共1兲 leads to the definition
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E关t共x兲兩x兴 = P关c共i兲兩x兴 共2兲
Eq. 共2兲 presents the cord of the BP-MLP classifier. Predicting the
future condition of decks with BP-MLP classifier requires exami-
nations to determine the MLP configuration of the decks’ data.
The factors identified as significant to deck deterioration were
used to examine the classifier.
Research Methodology
Data Collection
The inspection records, maintenance histories, and inventory data
of deck elements of bridges in Wisconsin were collected. In Wis-
consin, Pontis BMS is employed. Pontis defines “condition state”
of an element as the extent of damage to or deterioration of that
element. The condition states of the deck element are defined as
follows:
• Condition State 1: element shows little or no deterioration;
• Condition State 2: combined distressed area of element ⬍2%
of deck area;
• Condition State 3: distressed area between 2 and 10%;
• Condition State 4: distressed area between 10 and 25%; and
• Condition State 5: distressed area ⬎25%.
A bridge inspector conducts elements inspection, assigns
proper condition states to elements, and records the data onto
Pontis BMS biannually. In addition, records of the work per-
formed on bridges have been kept for managing the construction
projects on bridges in Wisconsin. These maintenance data are
imported onto Pontis BMS.
The records of 942 concrete decks that have been treated with
concrete overlays were retrieved from the Wisconsin database to
study the influence of maintenance history on deterioration.
Eleven attributes from the inventory of decks were collected to
study their impacts on deck deterioration. The records of 1,241
concrete decks not maintained were retrieved to study the influ-
ence of age and attributes on condition.
Data Analysis
Effect of Maintenance History on Condition
To assess the influence of maintenance history on deck deteriora-
tion, the records of 942 decks that have been treated with concrete
overlay were studied. This study identifies nine configurations of
maintenance histories in the records. They are listed below where
the sign of+ separates each maintenance. For example, a deck
with Maintenance History Type 2 has been maintained twice: it
was maintained by an asphalt concrete 共AC兲 overlay at the first
time, and then a concrete overlay at the second time 共the old
overlay was removed before a new overlay was placed兲. Cur-
rently in Wisconsin, AC overlay is considered as a temporary
maintenance action. An AC overlay may be applied on a deck as
a temporary fix until planned construction or rehabilitation of the
deck in the near future.
1. New bare deck+ concrete overlay;
2. New bare deck+ AC overlay+ concrete overlay;
3. New bare deck+ AC overlay and membrane+ concrete over-
lay;
4. New bare deck+ concrete overlay+ concrete overlay;
5. New bare deck+ concrete overlay+ AC overlay+ concrete
overlay;
 Table 1. ANOVA Results for Decks Maintained with Concrete Overlay
Mean of each
maintenance category Total mean Standard
Parameter 共years兲 共years兲 deviation F-value p-value
A12 8.67–20 11.35 4.28 1.9344 0.1283
A23 10.33–23 16.02 3.44 8.7023 0.0008a
a
Significant at 95% level of confidence.

6. New bare deck+ AC overlay and membrane+ concrete null hypothesis 共p ⬎ 5%兲. Therefore, it indicates that the mainte-
overlay+ concrete overlay; nance history of a deck is not a significant factor for influencing
7. New bare deck with coated bars+ concrete overlay; the rate of deterioration from Condition State 1 to 2, but it sig-
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8. New bare deck with coated bars+ AC overlay and
membrane+ concrete overlay; and
9. New bare deck with coated bars+ concrete overlay
+ concrete overlay.
For the 942 decks maintained, there are 2,300 inspection
records indicating the condition of the decks. For analysis, this
study defined A12 and A23 as the age of transition from Condition
State 1 to 2 and from Condition State 2 to 3, respectively. The
mean age of A12 of the 942 decks studied is 11.35 years. Of the
nine maintenance history types, decks with Maintenance History
Type 4 showed the lowest average age of 8.67 years, and the
decks with Maintenance History Type 2 showed a highest average
age of 20 years. The mean age of A23 of the decks studied is 16.02
years: of the nine maintenance history types, the decks with
Maintenance History Type 4 showed the lowest average age of
10.33 years, and the decks with Maintenance History Type 2
showed a highest average age of 23 years 共Table 1兲. Although the
decks are with the various maintenance histories, they are even-
tually maintained with the concrete overlays. But, in the mean-
time, the deteriorations of the decks from the Condition State 1 to
2 are observed at different average ages, and likewise from 2 to 3.
Therefore, ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the possibility
which the maintenance history has the statistically significant ef-
fect on the mean age of transition.
Two null hypotheses were tested. The first null hypothesis is
that the mean age of transition from Condition State 1 to 2, i.e.,
A12, for decks with different maintenance history types is the
same, i.e., Ā12共1兲 = Ā12共2兲 = ¯ = Ā12共9兲, with Ā12共n兲 representing
the mean value of A12 for decks maintained with maintenance
history type n. The second null hypothesis is that decks with
different maintenance history types have the same A23, i.e., mean
age of transition from Condition State 2 to 3, i.e., Ā23共1兲
= Ā23共2兲 = ¯ = Ā23共9兲, with Ā23共n兲 representing the mean value of
A23 for decks maintained with maintenance history type n. The
results of ANOVA are shown in Table 1 with corresponding sig-
nificance level 共p-value兲. These results show that there is not
enough evidence at a 95% level of confidence to reject the first
nificantly influences the rate of deterioration from Condition State
2 to 3. In other words, the influence of maintenance history is
apparent when decks have reached Condition State 2. The records
demonstrate that the maintenance-independent assumption of
Markovian deterioration model does not hold with respect to
decks; maintenance history does influence the performance of
decks.
Condition and Age
The distribution of deck samples recorded as having deteriorated
from one condition state to another was studied to examine
whether the distribution is the same among decks of different age
categories. If the age-independent assumption of Markovian de-
terioration models holds, the distributions should be independent
of age categories.
Data from the inspection of 1,241 decks with no history of
maintenance were used to eradicate the influence of maintenance
records on the condition of the decks. For these 1,241 decks, there
are 2,488 relevant inspection records. Inspection records of decks
with a biannual inspection period were used to form the transition
matrix. Taking initial Condition State 1 as example, as shown in
Table 2, the number of decks in five different age categories that
had deteriorated from Condition State 1 to another condition state
was counted and summarized. For Age Category 1 共1–10-year-old
decks兲, there were 73 decks in Condition State 1. After 2 years, 69
decks remained at Condition State 1 while 2 decks deteriorated to
each of Condition States 2 and 3. Therefore, the mean value of the
next condition state is 1.08. For Age Categories 2–5, the mean
values of the next condition state are 1.14, 1.31, 1.53, and 1.52,
respectively. ANOVA was conducted to examine the null hypoth-
esis that for decks in Condition State 1 the mean values of the
next condition state are all equal for decks among age categories.
The result of ANOVA shown in Table 2 indicates age dependency
between the current condition 共Condition State 1兲 and the future
condition state. Older decks in Condition State 1 have a higher
chance to deteriorate than younger decks in the same condition
state, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Distribution of Numbers of Decks Deteriorating from Initial Condition State 1 共Decks with No Maintenance兲
Next condition state
Age of deck at
initial condition state 1 Standard
Category 共years兲 1 2 3 4 5 Mean state deviation p-value
1 关1, 10兴 69 2 2 0 0 1.0822 0.3633 0.0001a
2 共10, 20兴 301 44 3 0 0 1.1437 0.3751
3 共20, 30兴 71 15 4 2 0 1.3152 0.5366
4 共30, 40兴 31 7 4 3 0 1.5333 0.9195
5 共40, 50兴 23 13 4 0 0 1.5250 0.6789
a
Significant at 95% level of confidence.

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 Table 3. Significance of Decks’ Age on Mean of Next State 共Decks with Table 5. Characteristics of Scaled Features
No Maintenance兲
After scaled
Initial
condition Original Standard
state p-value Feature data range Mean deviation

1 0.0001a Maintenance history 0–9 0.1073 0.1461

2 0.6099 Age 3–72 0.1802 0.1288
3 0.9010 Previous condition 1–5 0.3300 0.2073
4 0.9900 District 1–8 0.3662 0.3070
a Design load 1–6 0.6713 0.2361
Significant at 95% level of confidence.
Length 共m兲 6.6–992.3 0.0567 0.0664
Deck area 共m2兲
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59–46,699 0.0181 0.0301

The same analysis was performed for no-maintenance decks ADT 共vehicle/day兲 15–111,610 0.0914 0.1313
with initial Condition States of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The Environment 1–4 0.6482 0.3849
results shown in Table 3 indicate that the age of decks signifi- Number of spans 1–18 0.1092 0.1108
cantly influences the deterioration at the early stage, i.e., when Degree of skew 0–66 0.2122 0.2533
decks are in Condition State 1. After decks deteriorate to Condi-
tion State 2, 3, or 4, the age of decks is less important and dete-
rioration is influenced by other factors. The results demonstrate As shown in Table 4, 5 out of 11 parameters influence A12
that the age-independent assumption of Markovian deterioration significantly. These five parameters are district, design load, ADT,
model does not hold for deck deterioration; in other words, age environment, and degree of skew. It also shows that 5 out of 11
influences the deck deterioration rate and thus the condition of parameters influence A23 significantly. These five parameters are
decks. design load, deck length, deck area, environment, and number of
spans. Analysis reveals that parameters influencing deck deterio-
Dependency of Condition on Inventory Attributes ration vary with deterioration stage. Parameters of district, ADT,
To identify other parameters that may influence deck deteriora- and degree of skew significantly influence early deck behavior 共at
tion, 11 parameters derived from inventory data of decks recorded the time when a deck deteriorates from Condition State 1 to 2兲.
in the Pontis BMS were studied, as shown in Table 4. Records of The influence of deck length, deck area, and number of spans on
the condition of 1,241 decks with no maintenance were used to deck behavior is prominent at the later stage 共at the time when a
identify and avoid the influences of maintenance on the condition deck deteriorates from Condition State 2 to 3兲. The parameters of
of decks. ANOVA analysis was conducted to examine the signifi- design load and environment are shown to significantly influence
cance of each parameter on A12 共age of a deck when it deteriorates deck deterioration irrespective of deterioration stage. On aggre-
from Condition State 1 to 2兲 and A23 共age of a deck when it gate, 8 out of 11 parameters influence deck deterioration signifi-
deteriorates from Condition State 2 to 3兲. For continuous param- cantly.
eters, such as deck length, deck area, ADT, and degree of skew,
different categorizations for samples were tested and the one with
ANN Model
smallest p-value was summarized in Table 4. Accordingly, cat-
egorizations of decks’ lengths with equal spaces of 20, 30, and 40 This study utilizes pattern classification to develop the framework
m have been tested. The result of the categorization with equal of the ANN prediction model. The ANN prediction model is a
spaces of 30 m is presented. pattern classifier and is designed to predict the state of deteriora-
tion or condition of concrete decks. MATLAB programs were
used and developed to construct the ANN prediction model.
Table 4. Significance of Parameters Studied
Features Preprocessing
p-value
The features of the ANN prediction model are those parameters
Parameters A12 A23 found to be significant to deck deterioration, including mainte-
nance, age, previous condition, and eight significant inventory
County 0.9148 Not tested
attributes, as summarized in Table 5. For a deck without any
District 0.0014a 0.8643
maintenance, the value of the maintenance is assigned as 0. Fea-
Design load 0.0001a 0.0211a
ture age indicates the age of the deck for a deck without any
Deck lengthb 0.2045 0.0158a maintenance or the age of the latest concrete overlay for a deck
Deck areab 0.1599 0.0019a with concrete overlay共s兲. The feature matrix was a 3,336⫻ 11
Number of lanes 0.4157 0.8897 matrix, including a 1,085⫻ 11 matrix of data for decks without
Function class 0.1423 0.8758 maintenance and a 2,251⫻ 11 matrix of data for decks maintained
ADTb 0.0158a 0.6125 by concrete overlay.
Environment 0.0005a 0.0053a Feature transformation and feature dimension reduction analy-
b a
Degree of skew 0.0500 0.6100 ses were conducted to adjust and reduce the features. Feature
Number of spans 0.4699 0.0149a transformation analysis helps to equalize the influence of different
a
Significant at 95% level of confidence. features. The scaling data result in values of all features within the
b
The confidence level may be different when different categorizations for scalar of 0–1. The statistical characteristics of scaled data sets are
data samples are used. The categorization with highest confidence level presented in Table 5. Feature dimension reduction analysis in-
was used in the analysis and the smallest p value was reported in this cludes irrelevant feature reduction and redundant feature reduc-
table. tion. The irrelevant feature reduction examines the variance-mean

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 Table 6. Configuration Test of ANN Model MLP configuration 共Table 6兲. The results show that the average
Classification Average training classification rate increases when the number of hidden
rate classification rate neurons increases. The best average training classification rate,
ANN Training/testing 共%兲 共%兲 93.02%, results when the number of hidden neurons reaches 15.
type data set 共training/testing兲 共training/testing兲 On the other hand, the average testing classification rate decreases
Number of hidden layers when the number of hidden neurons increases. The best average
3 A, B/C 76.48/73.64 73.42/71.51 testing classification rate obtained, 75.39%, is for the five-layer
A, C/B 71.39/70.03 MLP with five hidden neurons in each hidden layer.
B, C/A 72.38/70.85 The testing that shows the final output of the MLP classifier
5 A, B/C 84.85/75.69 84.66/75.39 determines the final MLP configuration in this study. Accordingly,
A, C/B 82.37/76.52 the configuration of the MLP is a five-layer MLP with five hidden
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B, C/A 86.78/73.96 neurons in each hidden layer. For the 1,112 sets of input data, the
10 A, B/C 73.28/71.27 68.14/66.73 classifier yields average classification rates of 84.66 and 75.39%
A, C/B 67.22/64.09 for training and testing, respectively. The latter is considered to be
B, C/A 63.91/64.82 the prediction rate. To evaluate feasibility of the developed
15 A, B/C 55.19/54.74 55.24/54.58 model, concrete deck data obtained from one district in Wisconsin
A, C/B 55.30/54.69 were used. The data set contains an 836⫻ 16 matrix. The result
B, C/A 55.24/54.30 has an accuracy classification rate of 74.83% that approximates to
the test result of 75.39% of the model.
Number of hidden neurons
5 A, B/C 84.85/75.69 84.66/75.39
A, C/B 82.37/76.52 Conclusions
B, C/A 86.78/73.96
10 A, B/C 92.56/73.48 89.99/75.21 This study develops an ANN prediction model for deck deterio-
A, C/B 88.71/75.97 ration by adopting BP-MLP classifier. Using historical data of
B, C/A 88.71/76.17 decks in Wisconsin, it develops an 11-5-5–5-5-5-5 ANN, i.e., 11
15 A, B/C 93.11/71.27 93.02/72.90 inputs in the input layer, five hidden layers with five hidden neu-
A, C/B 93.66/74.03 rons in each layer, and five output labels in the output layer. In the
B, C/A 92.29/73.41 three-way cross validation, the ANN prediction model reaches
classification rates of 84.66 and 75.39% for the training sets and
the testing sets, respectively. These results indicate the potential
ratio of each feature to verify whether all values for a feature of the ANN model with BP-MLP classifier as a prediction tool.
remain constant or nearly constant, and thus the feature has to be The 11 factors identified as statistically significant for deck
removed. The redundant feature reduction examines the determi- deterioration in Wisconsin are the inputs of the ANN model.
nate rank of the feature matrix to verify the independence among These significant factors are maintenance history, age, previous
the features. After examining all the features, no feature needs to condition, and further eight factors including district, design load,
be removed and the total number of features remains 11. deck length, deck area, ADT, environment, degree of skew, and
number of spans. The results found that both age and the history
MLP Configuration Development and Validation of maintenance are statistically relevant to deck deterioration
The features listed in Table 5 were used to examine the BP-MLP 共NB: for decks maintained by concrete overlay the age refers to
classifier. The target labels are vectors 关1 0 0 0 0兴, 关0 1 0 0 0兴, the age of the concrete overlay兲, indicating that the two assump-
关0 0 1 0 0兴, 关0 0 0 1 0兴, and 关0 0 0 0 1兴, which present future tions of the Markovian deterioration model, namely, age indepen-
Condition States 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The training and dency and history independency, are invalid in this context.
testing data set contains a 3 , 336⫻ 16 matrix. The data set is The exploration of the potential of ANN for modeling deck
randomly divided into three equal subsets: A, B, and C on the deterioration found that ANN performs well when modeling deck
basis of three-way cross validation. Each subset contains a deterioration as a pattern classification problem. The developed
1 , 112⫻ 16 matrix. All neurons in the hidden layers use the hy- model has the capacity to accurately predict the condition of
perbolic tangent activation function; all output layers use the sig-
bridge decks and therefore provide pertinent information for
moidal activation function. The learning rate is 0.1, and the
maintenance planning and decision making. This is true at both
momentum constant is set as 0.8. The optimal configuration for
the project level and the network level. Application of the ANN
the BP-MLP classifier was determined by trial and error. The
classification rate is used as an indicator with a higher rate indi- prediction model to other elements of bridges or bridges in other
cating a higher classification completion. states or countries might require reidentification of significant pa-
The classification rates for various numbers of hidden layers rameters influencing deterioration and reassessment of the ANN
are shown in Table 6. The results show that five-layer MLP yields prediction model.
the best average classification rates in both training and testing. The recording of maintenance work carried out on bridge ele-
The average classification rate decreases when the number of hid- ments is a vitally important issue for effective BMS. Most agen-
den layers increases from 5 to 15. This result indicates that, for cies do not keep the records adequately. This study shows that the
this data set, any number of hidden layers greater than 5 does not record of maintenance directly influences the deterioration of a
yield better results. A different number of hidden neurons were bridge’s deck: meaning that a reliable bridge has a reliable record
tested with a five-layer MLP as a second step to determine the of maintenance.

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