Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey

Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey is the Professor for Infrastructure Management, in the Institute for Construction and Infrastructure Management of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ), Switzerland. He is also the president of the code and research committee 4.3 Maintenance Management: Total System of the Swiss Association for Road and Transport Professionals (VSS), and a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA), the Swiss Association for Municipal Infrastructure, and the Institute of Asset Management. 

Prof. Adey’s research is focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of infrastructure management. This includes the definition and standardization of the infrastructure management process, from setting goals to determining optimal monitoring and intervention programs, and evaluating the performance of infrastructure management organisations. It also includes the automation of parts of the infrastructure management process, e.g. the determination of optimal intervention strategies for single infrastructure objects and the development of algorithms to generate network intervention plans that maximise net benefit. Other themes of his research are estimating the risk related to infrastructure, including estimating infrastructure behaviour when subject to extreme events, estimating the resilience of the infrastructure and the system in which it is embedded, and estimating the optimal ways to restore infrastructure following extreme events. Prof. Adey works on infrastructure management issues related to many types of infrastructure, including road networks, rail networks, water distribution networks, sewer networks and building portfolios.

Convinced that increases in the net benefit of infrastructure are possible through professionalization / automation of infrastructure management, Prof. Adey’s teaching is focused on developing infrastructure managers that are equipped to both professionally management infrastructure and to enable automation of parts of it in the organisations in which they will work. His lectures include Systems Engineering, Infrastructure Management 1: Process, Infrastructure Management 2: Evaluation tools, and Infrastructure Management 3: Optimisation tools. He is also the Director of Studies for the Masters Spatial Planning and Infrastructure Systems at the ETHZ.

Prof. Adey is regularly involved in both national and international research projects, such as the ERA-NET Project Sabaris, the European Framework 7 Project Infrarisk, the European Horizon 2020 projects Destination Rail and Foresee, and helps to transfer the results of research to infrastructure managers by providing consultancy services to owners of large amounts of infrastructure.

He also regularly participates as a speaker at conferences, symposiums, and workshops on infrastructure management issues, such as the International Symposium for Infrastructure Asset Management and the International Forum on Engineering Decision Making, and contributes to UN and OECD events.

Prof. Adey publishes on infrastructure management issues in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Infrastructure Asset Management, Journal of Infrastructure Systems, Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, Journal of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, Journal of Building Engineering, Infrastructures, and others. He is an Editorial Board member of Journal of Infrastructure Asset Management and the Journal of Infrastructure Systems, and active reviewer for many others.

Prof. Adey obtained his Doctorate in Technical Sciences in Civil Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2002, his Master of Science in Structural Engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 1997, and his Bachelor of Engineering from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada in 1995.