Load-Capacity Rating of Bridge Populations through Machine

Learning: Application of Decision Trees and Random Forests

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Mohamad Alipour, S.M.ASCE1; Devin K. Harris, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE2; Laura E. Barnes, Ph.D.3;
Osman E. Ozbulut, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE4; and Julia Carroll5

Abstract: The functionality of the U.S. transportation infrastructure system is dependent upon the health of an aging network of over
600,000 bridges, and agencies responsible for maintaining these bridges rely on the process of load rating to assess the adequacy of individual
structures. This paper presents a new approach for safety screening and load-capacity evaluation of large bridge populations that seeks to
uncover heretofore unseen patterns within the National Bridge Inventory database and establish relationships between select bridge attributes
and their load-capacity status. Decision-tree and random-forest classification models were trained on the national concrete slab bridge data
set of over 40,000 structures. The resulting models were validated on an independent data set and then compared with a number of existing
judgment-based schemes found in an extensive survey of the current state of practice in the United States. The proposed approach offers a
method that provides guidance for improved allocation of resources by informing maintenance decisions through rapid identification of candi-
date bridges that require further scrutiny for either possible load restriction or restriction removal. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)BE.1943-
5592.0001103. © 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: National Bridge Inventory (NBI); Data-driven; Load rating; Load posting; Decision trees; Random forests.

Introduction maintenance continues to grow as a challenge for federal, state, and

The health and functionality of the national infrastructure system is
so vital to the United States that its incapacitation would have debil-
itating effects on the nation’s economy, security, and integrity
(DHS 2013). At the core of this infrastructure system is an aging
transportation network, which has been well documented to be in a
state of disrepair (ASCE 2013). This includes a national inventory
of over 600,000 bridges, carrying 4.5 billion cars and trucks per
day. As of 2014, the average age of these structures is 42 years,
approaching the typical 50-year design service life. Consequently,
24% of these bridges are classified as either structurally deficient or
functionally obsolete, and 10% have posted weight limits restricting
the flow of traffic (FHWA 2014). Considering the size and age of
this population, the need for strategies and resources for
1
Graduate Research Assistant, Dept. of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Univ. of Virginia, 351 McCormick Rd., Charlottesville, VA
22904-4742 (corresponding author). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003
-2018-134X. E-mail: ma4cp@virginia.edu
2
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Virginia, 351 McCormick Rd., Charlottesville, VA 22904-4742.
E-mail: dharris@virginia.edu
3
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Systems and Information Engineering,
Univ. of Virginia, 151 Engineer’s Way, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4747.
E-mail: lbarnes@virginia.edu
4 with improved engineering knowledge and available analytical
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Virginia, 351 McCormick Rd., Charlottesville, VA 22904-4742.
E-mail: ozbulut@virginia.edu
5
Graduate Research Assistant, Dept. of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Univ. of Virginia, 351 McCormick Rd., Charlottesville, VA
22904-4742. E-mail: jdc3rb@virginia.edu
Note. This manuscript was submitted on September 8, 2016; approved
on April 21, 2017; published online on August 9, 2017. Discussion period
open until January 9, 2018; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Bridge
Engineering, © ASCE, ISSN 1084-0702.
local governments (AASHTO 2012).
Under federal regulations, in-service bridges are subjected to
periodic inspections to identify visible deterioration, locate inter-
nal degradation, and ultimately assign condition ratings to each
bridge (NBIS 2004). These condition ratings and observed deteri-
oration attributes are typically used together with structural
bridge plans to determine the safe load-carrying capacity of
bridges (AASHTO 2011). In turn, this calculated capacity is com-
pared to the maximum live-load effects anticipated under state
law to calculate a rating factor and determine if all traffic may
pass freely, or if restrictive load posting is required. This process
is performed at three different levels—namely, the design, legal,
and permit load ratings—to reflect different vehicle types and the
corresponding uncertainty. States re-evaluate load ratings of their
bridges in the event of major changes to loads, traffic, material
properties, or structural conditions, such as widenings, repairs/
rehabilitation, and changes in conditions as revealed in inspec-
tions (cracks, section loss, excessive deflections, collision dam-
age, etc.). Moreover, in-service bridges may also need to be rated
to ensure their safety under the passage of permit or irregular
loads (AASHTO 2011). Fig. 1 depicts the steps in the load-rating
process and the possible resulting postings. Further details about
the rating process can be found in The manual for bridge evalua-
tion (MBE) (AASHTO 2011).
The practice of load rating has evolved over the years to align
methods, yet it still involves significant levels of engineering
judgment in determining the rating values. For instance, there is
a lack of knowledge of actual system-level behavior and load-
distribution mechanisms in bridge systems, especially in the
presence of damage and deteriorating conditions (Gheitasi and
Harris 2015). In addition to the simplified assumptions in the
analysis, the uncertainties in the assessment of structural deteri-
oration highlight the subjectivity associated with current rating
practices. This subjectivity has the potential to impact

© ASCE 04017076-1 J. Bridge Eng.

J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076

 Structural Plans
* RF denotes the rating factor
Field Condions
** See (AASHTO 2011) for
exclusions
Design Load Rang
(Inventory-Level)
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RF < 1
RF < 1 Legal Load Rang
RF < 1
(Oponal)
Posng or Repair/Rehab
RF < 1 Refined Methods
No permit rang
or Load Tesng
(a)
Fig. 1. (a) Bridge load-rating and posting process; (b) load-posting signage (image by author)
management strategies and safety-related decisions ranging
from permitting and load posting to rehabilitation, or an even
more conservative approach of terminating operations and
replacing the structure.
At the national level, it is of primary interest to the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA), the agency responsible for
establishing and overseeing bridge safety requirements, to improve
the fidelity of the current rating and performance evaluation proce-
dures to optimize the administration of federal funds and advance
the level of safety in the national highway system (OIG 2006).
Considering the shortcomings of the current procedures, responsi-
ble authorities are concerned with the level of errors involved in the
current load-posting status of bridges within the National Bridge
Inventory (NBI) database (OIG 2006). In addition to safety-related
concerns, bridge owners are hesitant to impede commerce or
increase operational costs and travel time by imposing unnecessary
load limits. To overcome these issues, it has been recommended
that state DOTs and local agencies develop data-driven, risk-based
approaches for oversight and updating the load-posting status of
their in-service inventory (OIG 2006).
Within this context, this study leverages emerging machine-
learning techniques to correlate select attributes of the in-service
structures available within the NBI database to predict the load-
posting status of each structure. This process serves to reveal hidden
patterns, uncover possibly causal relationships, and identify struc-
tures that may be misclassified. The proposed approach is expected
to inform maintenance and management decisions for in-service
bridges, with the potential to optimize the allocation of resources
based on the structural vulnerability and/or opportunity for
improved traffic flow. The two major outcomes of the proposed sys-
tem if implemented in practice are as follows:
1. Providing data-driven load postings for bridges with missing or
incomplete design information and structural plans based on
objective data analysis rather than subjective judgment.
2. Rapid screening of the entire inventory to find candidate
bridges for further analysis and possible required load posting
or posting removal, where misclassification is suspected.
Note that, for bridges with available design information, the
safe load-carrying capacities are calculated using structural
analysis, with the same principles assumed in the design process
© ASCE
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
RF*≥ 1
RF ≥ 1
Posng not required**
RF ≥ 1
May be rated for permit
(b)
(NCHRP 2014); however, the subjectivity of the process is
amplified dramatically for structures with missing or incomplete
design information, which are currently rated based on engineer-
ing judgment. Furthermore, although the study presented herein
has been limited to a specific class of structures (RC slab
bridges), the proposed approach is generic, allowing for extrapo-
lation across other bridge types, and is expected to promote fur-
ther discussion on the topic within the national and international
bridge community.
Review of Current Practice in the United States
An examination of the statistics on the methods used in the
United States to load rate highway bridges shows the primary
approach to be analytical methods. In 2014, among bridges lon-
ger than 6 m (20 ft), over 80% of the bridges in the NBI were
load rated using analytical methods, 0.6% were load tested, and
the remainder were load rated using engineering judgment or not
rated at all (Harris et al. 2015). In many of these cases, informa-
tion such as design or construction plans is not available for load
ratings, preventing the use of analytical methods. Article 6.1.4
of the MBE states that, for bridges lacking sufficient design
details, a physical inspection of the bridge by a qualified inspec-
tor and evaluation by a qualified engineer may be sufficient to es-
tablish an approximate load rating; load tests may also be con-
sidered (AASHTO 2011). Further investigation of the NBI data
shows that those bridges lacking design plans are usually short-
span, local, and low-traffic bridges, for which resource-intensive
load tests are usually deemed impractical considering the rela-
tive importance of the bridge. Without the benefit of a load test,
little direction is given as to how to implement a judgment-based
rating. The MBE states that a safe load capacity can be estimated
based on design live load, current condition of the structure, and
live-load history; additionally, a concrete bridge with missing
structural details need not be posted for restricted loading if it
has been carrying normal traffic for an appreciable period of
time and shows no distress (AASHTO 2011). Although the fun-
damental premise of these MBE prescriptions is rationally
sound, their application is challenged by the lack of objective
and quantitative criteria and by the intrinsic dependence on
04017076-2 J. Bridge Eng.
 personal experience and judgment of individual bridge engi-
neers. Furthermore, the accuracy and precision of the results
cannot be quantitatively evaluated.
As a baseline method for comparison and evaluation of the
approach proposed in this work, an extensive review of the state
DOT bridge manuals was performed to reveal how each state cur-
rently carries out a judgment-based rating. Many of the states only
refer to the clause in the MBE and list a number of variables that
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should be taken into consideration during the evaluation. A few
examples are UDOT (2014), CODOT (2011), and FDOT (2014).
These include year of construction; design vehicle; live loads (past,
present, and future); measurable structural dimensions; condition of
load-carrying components; redundancy of load path; changes since
original construction; comparable structures of known design; traf-
fic characteristics; and performance of bridge under current traffic,
such as evidence of distress or excessive movement under load.
These manuals do not explicitly explain the process of using these
variables to arrive at a posting load. It is notable that the
Massachusetts bridge manual states that engineering judgment
alone is not acceptable as a rating method and requires that compre-
hensive field measurements, nondestructive testing, and a material
testing program be performed for structures with unknown struc-
tural details (MassDOT 2013).
A number of the state DOTs have outlined systematic proce-
dures, usually in the form of flowcharts or tables, to help engi-
neers carry out judgment-based load postings. Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and Kentucky provide either a table or
clauses for load rating bridges without plans based solely on
condition ratings, in which a structure with a condition rating of
4 or less is posted (ODOT 2015; WSDOT 2015; ITD 2014;
KYTC 2015). The Nebraska Department of Roads (NDOR) uses
the same method, but indicates a condition rating of 3 to be used
as the load-posting threshold (NDOR 2010). Pennsylvania pro-
vides a tabulated rating method that is based on condition rat-
ings, average daily traffic (ADT), and a specific description of
signs of distress on the structure (PennDOT 2010). The Texas
DOT manual presents a flowchart to help rate concrete bridges
without plans, which is based on the observation of signs of dis-
tress in the inspection reports, as well as structure age and condi-
tion ratings (TxDOT 2013) (Fig. 2). Note that IR and OR refer to
inventory and operational level load ratings, respectively.
Fig. 2. Flowchart for load rating concrete bridges without plans (adapted from TxDOT 2013)
© ASCE 04017076-3
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
Although these methods provide an approach for engineers to
follow, they are still subjective, not rooted in analysis, and not
consistent across the country.
Data-Driven Approach
Machine learning seeks to mimic and automate the human learning
process, finding patterns in data without explicitly being pro-
grammed (Witten et al. 2011). These algorithms have been increas-
ingly used in a wide range of disciplines (Gullien et al. 2015;
Hergenroeder et al. 2014), including civil engineering (Amiri et al.
2016; Saitta et al. 2009; Melhem and Cheng 2003; Farrar and
Worden 2012; Jootoo and Lattanzi 2016). Specifically, the area of
infrastructure maintenance and management, which naturally
involves large data sets, has welcomed the use of these methods
(Melhem and Cheng 2003; Li and Burgueño 2010; Kim and Yoon
2010; Melhem et al. 2003; Bektas et al. 2013; Morcous 2005). Li
and Burgueño (2010) built models on Michigan’s database of
bridges to predict abutment condition ratings, whereas Huang
(2010) used artificial neural network classification on Wisconsin’s
concrete bridges to predict deck condition ratings based on geomet-
rical, functional, and environmental descriptors. Similarly, decision-
tree classification algorithms have been used by a number of
researchers to model infrastructure performance (Melhem and
Cheng 2003). In a conceptually similar approach, the authors of
this paper used multiple linear regression and neural networks on
the Virginia database of RC slab bridges to estimate load ratings
(Harris et al. 2015) and decision trees and random forests on the
national database to study the feasibility of predicting load postings
(Alipour et al. 2016). The present investigation contributes to the
existing push toward data-driven performance assessment by refor-
mulating the problem of predicting bridge load postings on a
national level into a data-driven framework. Although possible dis-
crepancies and inconsistencies in load-posting policies and prac-
tices in different states are expected to affect the performance of
the framework, the collective study of the national inventory is
expected to supply a data set with sufficient size and diversity for
efficient knowledge extraction.
J. Bridge Eng.
 Method of Study
Research Outline
This paper proposes a prediction tool for load-posting status of RC
slab bridges based on eliciting the knowledge hidden within the
existing bridge database. The approach is illustrated schematically
in Fig. 3 and is generally described by the following steps:
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1. Data were collected predominantly from the NBI in 2014 and
underwent a careful preprocessing step to obtain to a format
suitable for modeling.
2. Models were trained on the data using two popular classifica-
tion algorithms (decision trees and random forests), which
learn the patterns and relationships between the bridge descrip-
tors and their load-posting status.
3. These models were then evaluated in terms of accuracy
performance.
4. The developed models were tuned to maximize their
performance.
5. Once finalized, the models were evaluated on an unseen valida-
tion set to report a realistic estimate of the expected future per-
formance. The performance was also compared with the
available DOT practice as a baseline.
6. Finally, the models were applied to the data set for bridges with
missing plans, and the current (judgment-based) and predicted
(using the models) load postings were compared.
Data Collection and Preprocessing
The data set used for this investigation was derived from the NBI
database for the year 2014, which includes 610,749 structures
(FHWA 2014). This study focused on highway bridges; hence, a
preliminary filter was used to exclude all types of structures other
than highway bridges (e.g., culverts, railroad bridges, tunnels, etc.).
Also excluded were temporary structures, those currently closed,
and newly constructed and unopened bridges, which are structures
in unusual service conditions and therefore known to have outdated
or missing information. The resulting database included 456,219
observations. By filtering the data based on NBI Item 43A (kind of
material and/or design = concrete or concrete continuous) and 43B
(type of design and/or construction = slab), this study focused on
RC slab bridges, which resulted in a total of 64,134 bridges
(14.1%). Furthermore, 6,413 bridges reconstructed during their
service life (thus their condition is not consistent with their age) and
another 9,002 of those with precast decks were also excluded to
Data Collection & Preprocessing Model Development and Tuning
• Train/test data set
Bridges
with
Design
Plans
ccc
Naonal
Bridge Bridges
Inventory
without
(NBI) Design
Plans
Fig. 3. Proposed investigation approach
© ASCE 04017076-4
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
form a more consistent data set (using Item 107: deck structure
type = concrete cast-in-place). Finally, the remaining data under-
went a careful validity check to find and discard 1,334 (2.7%) miss-
ing or obviously erroneous values. These include missing, rare, or
impossible values (such as zero or negative for length and width,
age, etc.); extreme values, such as deck widths smaller than 10 ft;
maximum spans shorter than 3 m (10 ft); and ADT of zero or less
than five vehicles, which reflect rare and unusual conditions if not
typos and entry mistakes. Other examples are inconsistencies
between interrelated variables, such as deck width and number of
lanes or span length and total length. In the absence of access to doc-
umentation on individual bridges, an investigation of the causes of
the aforementioned inconsistencies was not possible. Therefore, the
basic process of validation using domain expertise and metadata
and elimination of suspicious and inexplicable instances was fol-
lowed in this paper. For details on the use of domain expertise to
ensure acceptable data quality as well as a variety of systematic
data-cleansing techniques, the reader is referred to Dasu and Johnson
(2003). Once data cleansing was finished, all of these filters accounted
for a further reduction of the population to 47,385 structures.
Of these remaining structures, 5,151 bridges are currently either
load rated based on judgment or are not load rated at all. Based on a
previous study (Harris et al. 2015), evidence suggested that the ma-
jority of these bridges likely lack sufficient as-built structural draw-
ings and documents necessary for a proper load rating. In these
cases, load rating and posting decisions are typically based on sub-
jective engineering judgment rather than objective analytical
capacity calculations. This data set, referred to as bridges without
plans, is not used in modeling, but is later used in an application of
the constructed models. From the remaining data, which are bridges
with plans (and thus have analytical calculation-based load ratings
and postings), an independent validation set of identical size
(5,151) was randomly chosen and kept aside. This validation data
set was never seen in any of the modeling or analysis steps and was
exclusively used to assess the performance of the finalized models.
The rest of the data (37,083 instances), referred to as the training
and test set in Table 1, are later split into a training set to create
models and a test set to evaluate them (see the “Performance
Evaluation” section). The number of observations used in each step
is summarized in Table 1.
The NBI database includes 116 items, some with multiple
entries and descriptors for each bridge; however, many of the
descriptors describe nonstructural properties of a bridge, such as
bridge name and identification numbers, geographical information,
hydrological features, properties of the wearing surface, safety
Performance
Assessment
Sensitivity
Test
Set
ROC
Decision
Tree 1 - Specificity
Validation
Training
Set
set
Bridges
Validation
Set
without
Design
Plans
J. Bridge Eng.
 Table 1. Size of Data Sets Used for Modeling and Validation
Data set Total size Posted bridges
Training and test set 37,083 3,291
Validation set 5,151 456
Bridges without plans 5,151 645
Total 47,385 4,392
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features, and vertical and horizontal clearances. Those of little to no
relevance to load ratings and posting were immediately discarded
from the model, as were those features that were obviously interde-
pendent and/or correlated, and those with many missing values.
Eleven of the remaining features were directly used as modeling
attributes. Deck, superstructure, and substructure condition ratings
and deck geometry evaluation ratings, which were initially on a
scale of 1–9, were recategorized as poor (rating <5), fair (5), and
good (>5), following the recommendation of the MBE (AASHTO
2011). Design loads were also recategorized into three groups of
heavy, light, and other vehicles based on their equivalent truck
weight. Three new attributes were also derived using the informa-
tion in the NBI: superstructure continuity, existence of water (over
water versus over a highway/railroad), and urban (yes or no). Two
more attributes, sine(skew) and log(ADT), were created using
mathematical transformations of the current attributes skew angle
and ADT, because the alternative representations were found to per-
form better than the original attributes. Finally, two more attributes
were imported from external sources to represent climatic and eco-
nomic conditions of the locations of the selected bridges. Each
bridge instance was assigned to one of nine climatic zones as classi-
fied by the National Centers for Environmental Information: north-
west, west, southwest, south, southeast, northeast, central, east
north central, and west north central (Karl and Koss 1984). The eco-
nomic condition for each bridge instance was characterized by the
ratio of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) to its respective
number of bridges (categorized into three groups as high, low and
moderate), thus attempting to represent a possible disparity in the
maintenance and management of bridges. Although this attribute is
expected to provide an indirect indication of the relative resources
available to the states for maintenance and upkeep, future study is
required to design more accurate economic attributes based on dif-
ferent infrastructure funding mechanisms. Table 2 summarizes the
24 resulting attributes (including the class) used in modeling and
the basic statistics for each attribute.
Modeling Techniques
Decision Trees
Decision trees are a popular family of classification models that
have been used in various domains and applications to approximate
discrete target functions. The learned functions are composed of a
series of successive decisions, represented by branches, which ulti-
mately terminate in a target class, represented by leaves. Each node
in the tree represents an attribute of the observation, and each
branch of the tree represents one of the possible values of the attrib-
ute. A particular observation is classified by beginning at the root
node of the tree and traversing the entire tree, testing the attribute
specified by the corresponding node of the tree with the process
being repeated for each subtree (Mitchell 1997).
In this work, the C4.5 algorithm was used for tree induction,
which is a top-down recursive splitting algorithm (Quinlan 1993).
Assume a collection of observations from the training data as
© ASCE 04017076-5
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
S ¼ s1 ; s2 ; …:; sn , where each observation (si ) is defined by p
attributes ½Ai ðfor i ¼ 1; …; pÞ], with values si ¼ fa1;i ; a2;i ; …;
ap;i g and a class label Ci ðfor i ¼ 1; …; mÞ. In this algorithm, to
construct a decision tree, an attribute (A) is selected for a collection
(S), and the observations are split into a number of subsets accord-
ing to their values for A. The selection of the attribute for splitting
the data is based on a measure called information gain, which is a
measure of entropy reduction. For a collection of observations (S),
entropy is defined as in Eq. (1), where pi is the probability that an
observation in S belongs to class Ci . With this definition, entropy is
a measure of impurity of the collection and is zero for a perfectly
pure collection of observations all belonging to the same class
X
m
EðSÞ ¼  pi log2 ðpi Þ (1)
i¼1
Information gain (G) is then defined as the reduction in entropy
from the original S using the attribute A. This can be seen in Eq. (2),
where the first term is the entropy of S and the second term is the
sum of entropies of subset Sv made by A weighted by the fraction of
instances of S that belong to Sv . In this equation, values(A) is the set
of all possible values of attribute A, and Sv is the subset of S where
attribute A has the value of v
X jSv j
GðS; AÞ ¼ EðSÞ  EðSv Þ (2)
jSj
v2Valuesð A Þ
The tree will thus be formed by recursively splitting the data at
the nodes using the attribute with the maximum information gain.
The stopping criterion is the minimum number of instances per leaf
(final node), which can determine the size of the tree; a larger mini-
mum leaf size results in a smaller tree, whereas a smaller minimum
leaf size allows for more complexity. Further details on the theory
and construction of decision trees, such as alternative impurity
measures and pruning methods, can be found in the works by
Witten et al. (2011) and Mitchell (1997).
Decision trees offer a number of advantages that make them a
suitable choice for this investigation. They can be visualized and
are relatively transparent and easy to construct and understand.
They are also very easy to interpret and can be translated into simple
if–then rules. These characteristics make them a suitable choice for
applications involving nonmachine-learning experts, such as bridge
owners, infrastructure managers, and maintenance officials. In addi-
tion, decision-tree learning is naturally able to handle both numeri-
cal and categorical data and is not sensitive to outliers. In this work,
binary splits were used and minimum leaf size was varied to change
the size of trees constructed (Witten et al. 1999).
Random Forests
To provide further comparison, C4.5 decision-tree learning was
also evaluated against an ensemble learning technique called ran-
dom forests (Breiman 2001). This method has gained significant
traction because it is invariant under scaling and various other fea-
ture transformations, and it is robust to the inclusion of irrelevant
features (Hastie et al. 2009). In random forests, a large number of
decision trees are constructed on randomized samples, obtained
with replacement, of the same size of the training data, each with a
few randomly selected attributes, and an instance is classified by
taking the majority vote among all the trees. The decision trees are
usually grown to the fullest, and the optimal number of trees and
attributes is usually problem-dependent; for a typical classification
pffiffiffi
problem with p attributes, p has been recommended as the
J. Bridge Eng.
 Table 2. Attributes Used in Modeling and Their Statistics

Standard
Item Number Attribute name–NBI item number Unit Type Range/value Mean deviation
Input 1 Age–27a Year Numeric [1, 138] 42.5 22.7
attributes 2 Deck geometry evaluation–68 — Nominal Good (54.1%), fair (24.4%), poor — —
(21.6%)
3 Maintenance responsibility–21a — Nominal State (43.2%), county (41.2%), city — —
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(7.7%), town (6.8%), other (1.1%)

4 Substructure condition rating–60 — Nominal Good (87.7%), fair (8.8%), poor (3.5%) — —
5 Deck condition rating–58 — Nominal Good (86.0%), fair (10.7%), poor (3.2%) — —
6 Superstructure condition rating–59 — Nominal Good (89.5%), fair (8.3%), poor (2.3%) — —
7 Urban or rural–26a — Nominal Rural (81.8%), urban (18.2%) — —
8 Kind of highway–58 — Nominal Roads (60.6%), state (31.6%), interstate — —
(7.8%)
9 Number of lanes–28 — Numeric 1 (3.0%), 2 (91.2%), 3 (1.6%), 4 (2.9%), 2.1 0.6
5 (0.6%), 6 (0.4%), 7-14 (0.3%)
10 ADT–29 — Numeric [5, 283,000] 3,918.0 10,100.3
11 Skew angle–34 Degrees Numeric [0, 90] 9.9 15.1
12 Number of spans–45 — Numeric [1, 105] 3.3 2.8
13 Max span length–48 Meter Numeric [2.5, 122.5] 9.6 3.9
14 Structure length–49 Meter Numeric [6.1, 1,119] 29.0 24.5
15 Deck width–52 Meter Numeric [3, 121.2] 10.8 4.4
16 Truck percentage of ADT–109 % Numeric [0, 98] 8.8 9.4
17 Span continuity–43a — Nominal Simple (43.0%), continuous (57.0%) — —
18 Design load–31 — Nominal Heavy (57.0%), light (28.7%), other — —
(14.3%)
19 Existence of water–71a — Nominal Water (92.2%), no water (7.8%) — —
20 Climate zone–N/A — Nominal S (30.7%), ENC (20.6), C (17.1%), SE — —
(9.2%), W (8.6%), WNC (6.3%), NE
(2.9%), NW (2.3%), SW (2.2%)
21 Economic index–N/A — Nominal Limited (37.0%), moderate (33.5%), high — —
(29.4%)
22 Log(ADT)–29a — Numeric [0.778, 5.307] 2.622 0.828
23 Sine(skew angle)–34a — Numeric [0, 1] 0.195 0.26
Class Load-posting status–41 — Nominal Unposted (91.1%), posted for load (Code — —
P) (8.9%)
Note: C = central; ENC = east north central; NE = northeast; NW = northwest; S = south; SE = southeast; SW = southwest; W = west; WNC = west north
central.
a
The feature is not originally in the NBI data and was defined based on one or more NBI items.

number of random attributes (Hastie et al. 2009). As a result, all
attributes will have the opportunity to be used in a number of trees
and contribute to the model, thus adding to its accuracy and stabil-
ity. In this study, random forests were trained on the data while
varying the number of attributes to be used in each tree and the num-
ber of trees in the forest.
Performance Evaluation
In each classification task, there is a training and testing phase to
build and tune the model and a validation phase to evaluate the
model’s performance on unseen data. In this research, a holdout
testing method was used in which two-thirds of the data were ran-
domly selected as the training set and the rest as the test set.
Furthermore, as previously described, a separate validation set was
also randomly selected and kept intact until modeling was finalized.
The models were constructed on the training set, and optimum val-
ues of the parameters in the models were found by evaluating per-
formance on the test set (Table 1). Once the models were fully tuned
and finalized, they were tested on this validation set to determine a
reliable estimate of the future error.
When evaluating a classifier on the test set, the model provides a
confusion matrix as its output, which summarizes the number of
correctly and incorrectly classified instances in each of the classes
involved. Consistent with the regular convention in binary-class
problems, such as the present problem, posted bridges were
assumed positive and unposted bridges as negative. Hence, the con-
fusion matrix includes the true positives (TPs) and true negatives
(TNs) as the total number of instances correctly classified as posted
and unposted, respectively. In contrast, it also includes false posi-
tives (FPs), which are the unposted bridges incorrectly classified as
posted, and false negatives (FNs), which are posted bridges incor-
rectly classified as unposted (Fig. 4).
Accuracy is defined as the ratio of all correctly classified instan-
ces to all data (Fig. 4) and is generally the most widely used crite-
rion to evaluate a learner. It should be noted, however, that this is an
insufficient measure of accuracy for the class-imbalanced problem
at hand (see the next section); by simply guessing the class of all
instances as not posted, an accuracy of 91.1% will be achieved,
which is equal to the ratio of all unposted bridges to the total number
of instances under study. In other words, the misclassification of the
minority class (posted), which is actually the main focus of this
study, will not contribute to more than 8.9% of this measure.

© ASCE 04017076-6 J. Bridge Eng.

J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076

 Therefore, two additional measures, the false positive rate (FPR)
and the false negative rate (FNR) errors, were utilized in conjunc-
tion with overall accuracy. In the present problem, FPR shows the
percentage of unposted bridges incorrectly classified as posted,
whereas FNR shows the percentage of posted bridges incorrectly
classified as unposted (Fig. 4). Therefore, it can be concluded that
the FNR error will lead to potentially insufficient bridges errone-
ously predicted as sufficient, which will sacrifice safety, whereas a
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by The State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY - Buffalo) on 06/09/24. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
FPR error produces the opposite effect, resulting in unnecessary
conservatism and loss of resources.
Although both the FPR and FNR errors are used to assess the
models, it is recognized that neither can be the sole criterion for
determining the best model, and a single-figure criterion is needed
for that purpose. The literature on classification, and class-imbalanced
problems in particular, suggests that the area under the receiver
operating characteristic (ROC) curve, denoted as AUC, can be
used as an efficient single-figure estimate of a classifier’s overall
accuracy over the full range of FPR–FNR trade-offs in the test
set. A ROC curve is defined as a two-dimensional curve plotted in
a coordinate system with the ratio of TPs over all positives
(TP þ FN) on the y-axis, and the FPR on the x-axis. For a classi-
fier, the curve is constructed by plotting points corresponding to
classification results with different decision thresholds in this
coordinate system. Once the curve is plotted for a classifier, the
AUC can be measured and reported as a unified performance
measure (Fawcett 2006). Further details in this regard can be
found in the literature (Huang and Ling 2005; Chawla 2005).
Class Imbalance Treatment
One of the challenges frequently encountered in classification tasks
is that the class attribute may have an imbalanced distribution,
meaning that one label (minority) of the class attribute is much less
frequent than the other (majority). Often, the detection and predic-
tion of the minority group is more of interest. Nevertheless, classifi-
cation algorithms generally tend to focus on maximizing the correct
classifications (accuracy) rather than on the minority group. Hence,
when a model is trained on a class-imbalanced data set, good accu-
racy (and thus very low FPR) is achieved, whereas most of the mi-
nority instances are incorrectly classified as majority (unacceptably
Actual
Posted
Posted TP
Predicted
Unposted FN
(a)
Fig. 4. (a) Confusion matrix for the classification task; (b) performance criteria equations (ACC denotes accuracy)
Table 3. Different Implemented Resampling Scenarios
Number Resampling scenarios
R0 Original data
R1 Majority undersampling 1:1
R2 Majority undersampling 3:1
R3 SMOTE minority oversampling 242.3%
R4 Majority undersampling 3:1 þ SMOTE minority oversampling 200%
© ASCE 04017076-7
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
high FNR). As the data set under study has only 8.9% posted instan-
ces, it was expected that, for models constructed on the data in its
originally unbalanced form, a high FNR and a small FPR would be
achieved. However, this investigation was more focused on detect-
ing the posted (positive) instances, hence reducing FNR while
maintaining an acceptable FPR was a primary goal.
Two main approaches to deal with class imbalance can be identi-
fied in the literature: (1) resampling methods and (2) cost-sensitive
classification (Visa and Ralescu 2005; Chawla et al. 2002). In resam-
pling methods, the ratio of the minority and majority is adjusted to-
ward balance by randomly undersampling the majority (removing a
number of majority instances), randomly oversampling the minority
[adding artificial minority instances using the synthetic minority
oversampling technique (SMOTE) (Chawla et al. 2002)], or a com-
bination thereof. In this investigation, four different resampling sce-
narios were tested: two of them resampled the data to a 1:1 class ra-
tio, and the other two to a 3:1 class ratio. However, one of the 1:1
scenarios was done by undersampling the majority equal to the mi-
nority (R1), whereas the other one first undersampled the majority to
3 times the minority and then added enough SMOTE samples to
make the classes equal (R4). One of the 3:1 scenarios used under-
sampling (R2), whereas the other one used SMOTE to achieve this
ratio (R3). A summary of the four resampling scenarios together
with the resulting number of observations used in each scenario is
summarized in Table 3. It should be noted that, in all of these scenar-
ios, the resampling is only performed on the training set, and the test
set was not resampled to achieve a more reliable evaluation.
A second option in dealing with class-imbalanced data is the use
of cost-sensitive classifiers. This methodology is based on the idea
that the relative costs of FP and FN errors are introduced in model
training by internal instance reweighting, such that the model is
constructed by minimizing the misclassification cost rather than
raw accuracy, thus making the base classifier cost-sensitive (Witten
et al. 2011). In this investigation, a cost-sensitive meta classifier
was used, which takes as input a cost matrix and the base classifier
to be used, which in this case was either a decision tree or a random
forest. At this stage of the investigation, the true costs of the prob-
lem are unknown and would need to be derived from detailed risk
analysis considering bridge owners’ feedback. However, in this
investigation, the approach was tested using three cases of relative
TP + TN
ACC =
TP + TN + FP + FN
Unposted FP
FPR =
FP + TN
FP
TN FN
FNR =
TP + FN
(b)
Minority [posted (%)] Majority [unposted (%)] Number of instances
3,291 (8.9) 33,792 (91.1) 37,083
3,291 (50) 3,291 (50) 6,582
3,291 (25) 9,873 (75) 13,164
11,264 (25) 33,792 (75) 45,056
9,873 (50) 9,873 (50) 19,746
J. Bridge Eng.
 costs, as summarized in Table 4. The values in this table show the Decision-Tree Results
relative cost of the misclassification of a positive instance versus a
To find the best model and optimize performance, decision-tree
negative one. For example, C2 is a scenario in which misclassifying
models were trained on the data set considering different class-
a load-posted bridge as an unposted one (with possibly severe out-
imbalance treatments as discussed earlier, while also varying the
comes, such as loss of life) is assumed to be 10 times costlier than minimum leaf-size parameter. Figs. 5(a–c) shows that the R0 sce-
vice versa (which is only an overly conservative and wasteful nario, which includes the intact imbalanced data, provides the low-
decision). est predictive quality across all leaf sizes with respect to the positive
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(posted) class by FN errors of more than 50%. This means that over
Results 50% of all posted bridges have been predicted as not posted. In con-
trast, R1 is the strongest scenario with FNRs between 10 and 20%,
This section presents the results of training, tuning, and testing sev- with R4 as the second best. However, R1 has the highest FPR, and
eral viable models. All modeling and analysis reported in this sec- thus the worst performance in detecting the unposted bridges.
tion were done using Weka 3.6. Weka is an open-source machine- Therefore, a question arises as to which model should be selected.
learning software package developed at the University of Waikato, The answer is given by the AUC criterion [Fig. 5(c)]. Interestingly,
New Zealand, which offers efficient implementations of many clas- R4 possesses the highest AUC and thus the best overall predictive
performance. Intuitively, both R2 and R3 have a 3:1 ratio of
sification algorithms, including decision trees and random forests,
unposted to posted instances, thus giving a higher weight to
that were used in this work (Witten et al. 1999).
unposted predictions yielding a higher FNR. In addition, R3 is
slightly better than R2 according to the AUC, which is in agreement
Table 4. Relative Misclassification Costs Used in Cost-Sensitive with Chawla et al. (2002), who stated that SMOTE is expected to
Classifiers
perform better than simple subsampling. Also, although R4 and R1
Number of both have a 1:1 class ratio, R4 is derived from a 3-times larger sam-
Number Cost-sensitive scenarios FPR cost FNR cost instances ple size, thus constructing a more powerful model, and as such is
selected as the preferred model. Another conclusion from Fig. 5(c)
C0 Original data 1 1 37,083
is that the minimum leaf size of 25 provides the best AUC and will
C1 Low FNR cost 1 5 37,083
thus be considered the optimum leaf size for the models developed
C2 Moderate FNR cost 1 10 37,083
in this work. Figs. 5(d–f) also present the results of cost-sensitive
C3 High FNR Cost 1 15 37,083
cases for decision-tree induction. In a manner similar to the

Resampling Scenarios
R0 R1 R2 R3 R4 R0 R1 R2 R3 R4 R0 R1 R2 R3 R4
0.35 0.95
Area Under ROC Curve (AUC)
False Negative Rate (FNR)

0.85
False Positive Rate (FPR)

0.93
0.75 0.3
0.91
0.65 0.25 0.89
0.55 0.2 0.87
0.45 0.85
0.15 0.83
0.35
0.1 0.81
0.25 0.79
0.15 0.05
0.77
0.05 0 0.75
5 25 50 75 100 125 150 5 25 50 75 100 125 150 5 25 50 75 100 125 150
Minimum Leaf Size Minimum Leaf Size Minimum Leaf Size

(a) (b) (c)

Cost-Sensitive Scenarios
C0 C1 C2 C3 C0 C1 C2 C3 C0 C1 C2 C3
Area Under ROC Curve (AUC)

0.85 0.25 0.93

False Negative Rate (FNR)

False Positive Rate (FPR)

0.75 0.91
0.2
0.65 0.89
0.55 0.15 0.87
0.45 0.85
0.35 0.1 0.83
0.25 0.81
0.05
0.15 0.79
0.05 0 0.77
5 25 50 75 100 125 150 5 25 50 75 100 125 150 5 25 50 75 100 125 150
Minimum Leaf Size Minimum Leaf Size Minimum Leaf Size
(d) (e) (f)

Fig. 5. Decision-tree results for different leaf sizes (a and d) FNR; (b and e) FPR; (c and f) AUC

© ASCE 04017076-8 J. Bridge Eng.

J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076

 resampling scenarios, Case C0 (the intact original imbalanced data)
shows unacceptably higher FNR and significantly lower FPR com-
pared with the three cost-sensitive cases. This highlights the effect of
class imbalance and confirms the need to use proper class-imbalance
treatment methods. Also, although C2 and C3 have very close FNRs,
the higher FPR of C3 results in its overall lower AUC. Therefore, C2
is chosen as the best cost-sensitive decision-tree model. Fig. 5(f) also
confirms a minimum leaf size of 25. Values of performance measures
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100, including a few of the short decision paths, showing how the tree
can be used to predict the load-posting status of a bridge under ques-
tion. For example, this tree indicates that, for older bridges, mainte-
nance responsibility is a very useful predictor, whereas younger
bridges require a more complex network of predictors. Thus, the tree
not only offers a simple and understandable tool to the owners as a
preliminary screening step or an alternative to judgment-based rating
for bridges with missing as-built plans, but can also serve to illumi-

for the best resampled (R4) and the best cost-sensitive (C2) tree mod- nate trends and relationships previously undetected.
els are presented in Table 5.
The resulting structure of a developed decision-tree model can
Random-Forest Results
shed light on the classification problem and the interaction of attrib-
utes within the problem. For schematic purposes, Fig. 6 illustrates a Random-forest models were constructed for the problem by varying
sample decision tree using R1 resampling and a minimum leaf size of the number of trees in each forest and number of attributes in each

Table 5. Results of Testing the Models on Unseen Validation set of 5,151 Bridges

FNR (%) FPR (%) Accuracy (%) AUC

Number Model Test Val. Test Val. Test Val. Test Val.
M1 DT, C2, leaf size = 25 12.9 12.1 16.0 15.6 84.3 84.7 0.917 0.925
M2 DT, R4, leaf size = 25 16.7 16.7 13.6 12.8 86.1 86.9 0.896 0.909
M3 RF, 200 trees and R1 9.8 9.9 15.2 13.5 85.3 86.8 0.941 0.947
M4 RF, 200 trees and R2 23.9 22.8 6.4 6.6 92.0 92.0 0.945 0.951
M5 RF, 200 trees and R4 19.7 16.2 8.9 8.9 90.1 90.4 0.942 0.951
Note: DT = decision tree; RF = random forest.

AGE
≤ 54 yrs > 54 yrs

SUBSTRUCTURE Poor MAINTENANCE

CONDITION POSTED* RESPONSIBILITY
State Other
Other

DECK ≤ 7.2m DECK ≤ 7.5m ECONOMIC Other

WIDTH
POSTED WIDTH
POSTED INDEX
POSTED

> 7.2 m > 7.5m High

DESIGN Heavy CLIMATE SE SPAN Simple

LOAD NOT POSTED ZONE
POSTED CONTINUITY
POSTED

Other Other Continuous

CLIMATE SE
ZONE
POSTED NOT POSTED NOT POSTED

Other
* “POSTED” denotes a bridge that requires load posng.
ECONOMIC Other
INDEX
NOT POSTED Sample Decision Paths
Moderate If age is less than 54, substructure condion is Other, deck
width is greater than 7.2m and design load is Heavy, then
KIND OF Roads
HIGHWAY POSTED structure is not to be posted.

If age is greater than 54, maintenance responsibility is

Other
Other, economic index is High and span is simple, then
structure is to be posted.
NOT POSTED

Fig. 6. Sample decision tree with R1 resampling and minimum leaf size of 100; SE denotes southeast

© ASCE 04017076-9 J. Bridge Eng.

J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076

 tree. The number of trees was varied from 50 to 250; all performance bridges without plans. Because of the subjective nature of this
measures improved in larger forests, with 200 trees providing a bal- approach, the accuracy of the results depends on the knowledge and
anced choice between performance and computational complexity. experience of the engineer and, therefore, cannot be easily quanti-
Fig. 7 depicts the relationship between accuracy and the number of fied. However, in the case of the few states where auxiliary tables or
features in each tree, compared across multiple resampling scenar- flowcharts are provided in the load-rating manuals, the accuracy
ios. Without resampling, the R0 model has a FNR of approximately can be assessed. To demonstrate the advantage of the proposed
50% and a FPR of 2%, indicating that this model fails in detecting approach over the current practice, both methods were applied on
the positive (posted) class, but is very successful in detecting the the validation set. Note that this is a set of 5,151 randomly selected
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by The State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY - Buffalo) on 06/09/24. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

negative class. This result is to be expected considering the class bridges with plans for which actual quantitative load ratings exist
imbalance and is consistent with the decision-tree results. The lowest (ground truth). The proposed approach (Model M3 as an example)
FNR and highest FPR belong to R1 and R4, respectively; however, is compared with the approach shared by Oregon, Washington,
the FPRs are all below 15% for R1 and 10% for R4. The AUC scores Idaho, and Kentucky, in which any bridge with a condition rating of
show a general decreasing trend with an increase in number of attrib- 4 or below is to be posted (ODOT 2015; WSDOT 2015; ITD 2014;
utes, which is an expected behavior with random forests with 4, 5, KYTC 2015). The methods in the Texas and Pennsylvania load-
and 6 attributes working best, which is again in line with the value of rating manuals require knowledge of the appearance of the member
pffiffiffiffiffi
p recommended by Breiman (2001); however, Fig. 7(c) shows and signs of distress, and thus cannot be directly used for compari-
that all scenarios are comparable in terms of overall performance son. As an alternative, assuming no signs of structural distress, the
because the largest difference between AUCs of any two scenarios condition ratings in the Texas DOT flowchart were used to create
is approximately 0.5%. Although R2 and R0 show a negligible another baseline (TxDOT 2013). Table 6 summarizes the perform-
advantage in AUC, Models R1, R2, and R4 were selected as the ance comparison and shows that the proposed approach provides
most efficient models because they also have satisfactory FNR and superior performance, despite an overall lower accuracy, with a sig-
FPR values. Cost-sensitive random-forest models exhibited similar nificantly lower FNR while maintaining an acceptable FPR. As
trends, with AUC values comparable to the R2 and R0 models, but stated before, FNR error is a matter of safety, as an insufficient
for these models, the FNRs ranged from 27 to 36%, whereas the bridge is allowed to remain open, whereas the FPR error corre-
FPRs ranged from 3.5 to 6%; consequently, none of those models sponds to conservative misclassifications that lead to unnecessary
were deemed suitable as the preferred model. restrictions.

Final Evaluation of Validation Set

Applications and Discussion
Two sets of performance metrics are reported in Table 5 for the five
final best models. The first values (Test) represent the performance The data-driven approach introduced in this paper can be readily
calculated on the test set as part of the tuning process. Moreover, used for two main applications. First, the models can be used on the
each model is tested on the independent validation set (Val.), which population of bridges without plans to complement and verify the
has never been seen or used in the modeling process and thus can judgment-based rating. Second, the approach can be used to screen
more effectively predict the performance on any future unseen data. a population of bridges and identify which may be misclassified and
It can be seen from these performance metrics that all of the models warrant further investigation.
perform very well by producing validation results in close agreement
with the performance expected by the test results, thus confirming Table 6. Comparison of Performance of the Proposed Approach with
the models’ generalizability. Also, considering the ranges of FNR, Current Practice
FPR, and accuracy, it is expected that these models can successfully
predict nearly 77–90% of the posted bridges, 84–93% of the Method FNR (%) FPR (%) Accuracy (%)
unposted bridges, and 85–92% of the entire population. Proposed method (M3) 9.9 13.5 86.8
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, 89.5 2.3 90.0
Comparison with Current Practice Kentucky DOT methods
Using condition ratings of Texas 45.8 14.1 83.1
It was noted in the “Introduction” that the majority of state DOTs
DOT flowchart
prescribe engineering judgment by qualified engineers for rating

R0 R1 R2 R3 R4 R0 R1 R2 R3 R4 R0 R1 R2 R3 R4
0.7 0.25 0.95
Area Under ROC Curve (AUC)
False Negative Rate (FNR)

False Positive Rate (FPR)

0.6 0.945
0.2
0.5
0.94
0.15
0.4
0.935
0.3 0.1
0.93
0.2
0.05
0.1 0.925

0 0 0.92
3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25
Number of attributes in each tree Number of attributes in each tree Number of attributes in each tree
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7. Comparison of different resampling scenarios for random forests with 200 trees: (a) FNR; (b) FPR; (c) ROC

© ASCE 04017076-10 J. Bridge Eng.

J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076

Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by The State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY - Buffalo) on 06/09/24. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Fig. 8. Application of proposed approach for inventory screening
Model Deployment on Bridges without Plans
As an initial application of the proposed approach, Model M3 (low-
est FNR) and Model M4 (lowest FPR) were applied to the popula-
tion of 5,151 bridges without plans in an effort to assess the quality
of current judgment-based load postings. Using M3 results, 8.1% of
all bridges currently posted by judgment (52 cases) may not need
load posting and should be considered for further evaluation and
possible removal of load postings. In contrast, according to M4,
18.0% of bridges currently unposted (812) may actually need to be
posted and should be considered for more careful rating analysis
and possible posting. This is consistent with the findings of Table 6
resulting from the application of the current practice models on
bridges with plans, whose true load postings are known from ana-
lytical calculations, wherein the current practice resulted in a signif-
icantly higher FNR than FPR error. This in turn demonstrates that
current judgment-based ratings are biased toward economy and
away from safety, with a higher tendency to misclassify a deficient
structure that seems sufficient than its seemingly insufficient coun-
terpart. One plausible explanation is that human judgment is not
fully capable of detecting hidden deterioration mechanisms taking
place within a structure. This suggests that more effective load-
rating and load-posting analyses are required for structures without
plans to reach a desirable level of safety in the national infrastruc-
ture network. Because load-testing and nondestructive evaluation
techniques are cost prohibitive to implement indiscriminately, the
approach presented in this paper is therefore proven to be a useful
tool for prioritizing those bridges most in need of a more quantita-
tive analysis.
Inventory Screening
To aid in the allocation of resources for improving safety and traffic
flow, these models can be used to highlight bridges that would
likely benefit from a more thorough evaluation. Unposted bridges
that the model predicts to be posted may have hidden load-carrying
deficiencies. Conversely, posted bridges predicted to be unposted
may have sufficient reserve capacity to safely carry unrestricted
traffic. Such bridges may have been subject to overly conservative
analysis and can be candidates for further evaluation and possible
load-posting removal, thereby increasing the flow of commercial
and emergency vehicles. The flowchart in Fig. 8 illustrates the pro-
cess of applying the data-driven models for the aforementioned
tasks.
© ASCE 04017076-11
J. Bridge Eng., 2017, 22(10): 04017076
Conclusions
Machine learning was leveraged to construct models that learn the
underlying relationships between a number of bridge properties and
the load-capacity status of the structure. Decision-tree models were
used to provide a flowchart-type tool to guide bridge owners and
maintenance officials while their performance was compared with
random forests. Both sets of models, with the required treatment of
class imbalance, were found to yield satisfactory results in terms of
accuracy in both posted and unposted classes. A number of selected
models were then validated on an independent set of over 5,000
bridges, and the observed performance was compared with a num-
ber of existing judgment-based ratings found through a survey of
the current state of practice in the United States. The superior per-
formance observed in this comparison proves the power of the
trained models while also highlighting the inherent bias of the cur-
rent practice toward economy over safety. Finally, the application
of the models on bridges without plans resulted in a significantly
higher number of unposted cases that may need to be posted than
vice versa, reaffirming the bias found in the current judgment-based
ratings. The misclassified structures in this set may also serve to
identify candidate bridges for closer examination, as they may pos-
sess yet undetected deterioration. Considering these results and the
prohibitive cost and resource demand associated with performing
load tests on bridge populations, the proposed approach is shown to
be of value for prioritizing maintenance operations and optimizing
the allocation of resources in infrastructure management practice.
Future work will extend the proposed approach to other classes of
structures and other bridge safety and functionality measures, pro-
viding a step toward data-driven infrastructure management.
Acknowledgments
This work was part of a project sponsored by the Virginia
Department of Transportation (VDOT) on load rating bridges with
missing or insufficient as-built information. The authors thank Dr.
Bernie Kassner from the Virginia Transportation Research Council
(VTRC), Jonathan Mallard from the VDOT, and Dr. Amir Gheitasi
for their assistance during the study and manuscript preparation. The
contents of this paper reflect the views of the authors, who are
responsible for the facts and accuracy of the presented data, but do
not necessarily reflect the official views of the VDOT.
J. Bridge Eng.
 Supplemental Data
Figs. S1–S22, showing histograms of the attributes of Table 2, and
Table S1, showing a subset of the data, are available online in the
ASCE Library (www.ascelibrary.org).
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