4.1.2 Making the case for an AMT

Applying an asset management approach, particularly for lifecycle planning (see section 2.4), requires significant computation for data processing and storage, maintenance and investment strategies or scenarios, and graphical display. Such a computation-intensive approach is likely to be more applicable to organizations at the Proficient and Advanced maturity levels, which consider several (technical, economic, social, and environmental) requirements and apply a variety of mathematical and statistical approaches and Bayesian analysis and enable a heuristic approach to asset management. Such methods involve the simulation of a large number of complex scenarios, which may require significant computing power. However, even at the basic maturity level, a significant number of operations is required. Furthermore, at all levels of maturity the ability to display the results of the scenarios in clear and understandable route diagrams, tables, and maps is a crucial aspect of asset management that enables it to demonstrate benefits such as efficiency.

As a consequence, modern transportation asset management analysis requires computers capable of sophisticated computational analysis. Asset management tools have been in use for at least two decades that support this need. They are not only able to deal with a huge amount of data and analysis scenarios, but can also present the results in visual formats such as GIS.