Center for Transportation Research and Education

About the research

The objective of this project is to provide support to the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) to implement and operate AASHTO’s PONTIS bridge management software.

PONTIS is a comprehensive bridge management system developed as a tool to assist in the challenging task of bridge management. PONTIS stores bridge inventory and inspection data, formulates network-wide preservation and improvement policies for use in evaluating the needs of each bridge in a network, and makes recommendations for which projects to include in an agency’s capital plan for deriving the maximum benefit from limited funds.

The Iowa DOT has been working on the development and implementation of their bridge management system, using PONTIS. The system will allow the Iowa DOT to make consistent and cost-effective decisions for their bridge maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement program. To fully utilize the capabilities of PONTIS, the program needs to be customized to fit the conditions and specific needs of the Iowa DOT. Performance, cost, and other bridge management parameters need to be developed specifically for the bridges in Iowa. This will ensure that PONTIS will produce an accurate assessment of bridge needs for the Iowa DOT. To accomplish this, bridge inspection and performance data need to be mined to establish baseline data to operate PONTIS.