A Decision Concept to the Historic Pedestrian Bridges Recovery Planning

Abstract

One of the important segments of pedestrian infrastructure are pedestrian bridges. The importance is greater if these bridges are of historical and cultural significance to the city or region. To manage these bridges, it is important to develop an approach that can enable systematic and organized decision-making for experts and policy makers. Hereby, a recovery of bridges is analyzed for the priority ranking of historic pedestrian bridges. Maps of Europe from XIX. Century for the area of Split-Dalmatia County (SDC) are used to locate the bridges. A total of nine bridges are identified, and a set of relevant criteria are defined to evaluate these bridges. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used for the comparison of criteria, evidential reasoning for the assessment of bridges according to each criterion, and then the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is conducted for priority ranking of bridges for the recovery planning. To achieve the final order of bridges it was crucial to take into account mechanical, dynamical, ecological, financial, and, also, social characteristics of these bridges, which was not an easy task. For this reason, the authors proposed a model of decision support to help policy and decision makers in the managing of recovery activities of historic road bridges. The model was conducted on the bridges in the area of SDC, built until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.