Geotechnical Asset Management: Breaking Silos and Building Resilience

Abstract: Geotechnical Asset Management (GAM) has been gaining traction at the national level as an effective approach to manage geotechnical assets and support the transportation network to perform effectively. This study will discuss the role of GAM within transportation asset management practice (TAM) and the potential role GAM plays in breaking the silos and improve resilience. The paper will present the findings from an ongoing study in to develop and implement a risk-based GAM program as an integral part of the agencies TAM and long-range planning activity. The program includes a new risk-based tiered data collection, which is used to estimate the return on investment (ROI) of data collection in GAM. Following the data collection and data management activities, the program included a quantitative risk management approach to evaluate the probabilistic performance of multiple geotechnical assets including cut slopes, earth retaining structures, and embankments. The probabilistic performance models were then used to prioritize the management of these geotechnical assets and estimate the impacts on other TAM programs. Moreover, the program can be considered as a service center to help manage the foundational components of other TAM programs.
Following the discussion on the GAM program components and workflow, the paper discusses the role of GAM in improving transportation networks resilience. This extent and variability of geotechnical assets type (e.g., walls, slopes and structural foundations) makes them the most critical and challenging assets to design under the changing climate impacts and the extreme weather events. Moreover, geotechnical assets are vulnerable because of the number of internal asset variables and their susceptibility to accelerated moisture, erosion, and environment-related changes, which directly or indirectly impact the asset performance and the other assets they support or surround. In this section of the paper, we will discuss the workflow and components of a recently developed geotechnical resilience-based design and management (GRBDM) framework. This approach considers the collective behavior of the transportation system consisting of multiple asset families under different normal and rapidly changing extreme conditions. One of the major aspects in the GRBDM is to model the impact of extreme events and changing conditions in accumulating damage and accelerate the deterioration of the asset leading to progressive serviceability or strength failure. These progressive failures have a critical impact on the overall performance of the network. Moreover, the philosophy behind GRBDM is to design and manage geotechnical assets as flexible assets that can be maintained and improved by corrective actions.