NBIAS
National Bridge Investment Analysis System

Cambridge Systematics developed the National Bridge Investment Analysis System (NBIAS) — an analysis tool to predict nationwide bridge maintenance, improvement, and replacement needs — to support creation of a national bridge strategy by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). A powerful modeling tool, NBIAS helps forecast bridge performance on more than 50 measures of effectiveness over a multi-year period for a range of budgeting levels.

Built around the same techniques used in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Pontis® Bridge Management System (BMS) originally developed by Cambridge Systematics, NBIAS allows national agencies to see bridge maintenance needs at an aggregated level for more than 500,000 bridges.

Benefits

• Simplifies bridge capital analysis through robust modeling tools and a flexible and intuitive graphical interface
• Demonstrates the impact of budget alternatives with graphical and tabular displays of all performance measures affected
• Quantifies in real time the annual budget levels required to achieve specific targets for up to 50 performance measures

Features

NBIAS enables “what if” analysis, forecasting how the condition of the national bridge network will vary based on different levels of investment. Equally powerful, the system will quantify the annual budget level required to hit a specified target level for a selected performance measure.

Recent releases of NBIAS have added:

• Support for bridge-level analysis
• Ability to import element-level data that override elements synthesized by NBIAS
• State-specific cost adjustment factors
• New MR&R models that allow you to choose how aggressive NBIAS will be in maintaining bridge health
• More options that provide greater control over the modeling process
• Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Additional Information

For additional information, contact William Giuffre of Cambridge Systematics at 617-354-0167.