Failure risk management of buried infrastructure using fuzzy-based techniques

The effective management of failure risk of buried infrastructure assets requires knowledge of their current condition, their rate of deterioration, the expected consequences of their failure and the owner's (decision-maker) risk tolerance. Fuzzy-based techniques seem to be particularly suited to modeling the deterioration of buried infrastructure assets, for which data are scarce, cause-effect knowledge is imprecise and observations and criteria are often expressed in vague (linguistic) terms (e.g., 'good', 'fair' 'poor' condition, etc.). The use of fuzzy sets and fuzzy-based techniques helps to incorporate inherent imprecision, uncertainties and subjectivity of available data, as well as to propagate these attributes throughout the model, yielding more realistic results.