Service life management of concrete harbour structures

Along the Norwegian coastline there are approximately 9000 harbour structures, of which most of them are concrete structures that suffer from an uncontrolled rate of deterioration in the aggressive environment. In the present work, a study of current performance and existing routines for service life inspection and management of Norwegian concrete harbour structures has been carried out. The work has shown that most of the concrete harbour structures are in a very poor condition. Both for governmental, municipal and private owners, a big gap between current practice for service life management for such structures and existing knowledge on service life management of infrastructure systems was observed. The work has further shown that there is a wide range of methodologies and procedures for service life management of infrastructure systems available, the utilization and application of which would greatly facilitate the maintenance of concrete harbour structures and provide both an economic and sustainable management of such structures.