Adaptive Decision Framework for Civil Infrastructure exposed to Evolving Risks

Adaptive decision-making (ADM) is a structured process of learning, improving understanding, and ultimately adapting management decisions in a systematic and efficient way, aimed at reducing uncertainties over the course of the management timeframe. This approach holds a great potential for dealing with the challenges faced by civil infrastructure facilities, especially those exposed to evolving risks caused by changes in environmental and urban settings, evolving expectations and preferences of the public, tightening budgets, and unpredictable political circumstances over their lifetime. This paper suggests ADM as a way of continuously reevaluating the risks and providing more adaptive and flexible management actions to enhance infrastructure resilience under dynamic changes and evolving conditions. The proposed ADM is illustrated with a benchmark problem based on a testbed residential community in Kathmandu, Nepal to explore the effect of incremental building expansion on the seismic risk to a community and examine the feasibility and effectiveness of ADM in improving resilience.