Project overview
ACHILLES was led by Newcastle University and also included universities at Bath, Durham, Leeds and Loughborough, as well as the British Geological Survey. 'Transportation group' worked closely with the 'Infrastructure group' at the University of Southampton.
ACHILLES focused on long-linear assets that are critical to the delivery of services over long distances such as road and rail embankments and cuttings, pipeline bedding and flood protection structures. Transportation group’s work provided economic forecasting and decision support at the asset, route and network levels. More specifically, a model of Whole Life Costs of interventions was developed and the social costs of service disruptions considered. Risks and uncertainty were analysed using Monte Carlo Simulation within a Bayesian hierarchical structure. Decision making using a variant of minimax regret has been developed.
An analysis of infrastructure assets on the London–Bristol corridor has been undertaken as part of a Simulation and Modelling theme (SaM). This then contributed to the Design and Decision (DaD) theme which also considered the cost and benefits of improved information, for example from remote monitoring of slope condition.
Further information is available from the ACHILLES website.
