Introduction. Questions of priority of road bridges (hereinafter referred to as bridges) arise when drafting various types of long -term, medium -term or short -term strategies, programs and plans for routine maintenance, current and major repairs, reconstruction, replacement of emergency or destroyed bridges in a limited amount (financial, production capacity, terms, etc.). As a result of the priority, the list (or lists) of the bridges is determined by some criteria, which require the application of certain measures, depending on the place of bridges in this list.
Problem Statement. One of the prerequisites for effective management of the operation of bridges on the network of roads of Ukraine during their use is to improve the evaluation of bridges rating in the Software complex «Analytical expert system of bridge management» (SC AESUM), taking into account world experience, requirements of regulatory and technical documents and specific results for technical assessment of bridges.
Purpose. The purpose of the work is to create a method and its computer implementation, which allows experienced experts to build a flexible system of criteria for significance (ratings) of bridges with the ability to adjust their weight influences.
Materials and methods. Research materials are the results of the analysis of world experience in the priority of highway bridges and SC AESUM data on the availability of bridges, their surveys, assessments of technical condition and corresponding expert conclusions. Methods are based on the use of the analytical hierarchical process (AHP), proposed by Thomas L. Saaty, which is widely used in practical activity, in particular in the priority of bridges, in many countries around the world.
Results. The result of the work is a way of constructing and using a hierarchical system of criteria and subcriteries of an arbitrary species with the determination of their coefficients of weight, designed to evaluate the index of the rating of the bridge and is implemented on the basis of a widespread and widespread tabular processor Excel.
Conclusions. The proposed method includes procedures and tools, the use of which in a certain sequence makes it possible to build an arbitrary hierarchy of criterias and subcriterias, to determine their weight influences and to carry out expert evaluation of the significance (rating) of bridges in order to prioritize them for the formation of programs and plans for maintaining the operation of bridges.
