Existing Bridges – Burden or Opportunity?

Abstract

It is widely accepted that safety and serviceability are primary concerns in bridge design. However, for the most of bridges' service life, these concerns are addressed indirectly by a qualitative measure, defined herein as condition state, which is based upon observable damages recorded during inspections. Condition state is at best, only loosely correlated to safety and serviceability. It would be more reasonable to address safety and serviceability in inspection process directly, using the information on bridge performance obtained during the design and construction. This seems inevitable given the ageing, deterioration, growing traffic and climate change. A vague measure for the deviation of inspected bridge from the "as new" condition i. e. condition state is simply not adequate tool to cope with these challenges. The future Bridge Management Systems (fBMS) should therefore include assessment of safety and serviceability based on inspection results and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). This can be further enhanced by combining or merging BMS with Bridge Information Models that are currently being developed. The fBMS will thus become an invaluable decision-support tool not only for maintenance planning but also for specification of heavy vehicle corridors, risk assessment due to natural hazards, etc.