Guidelines and policy for maintaining and managing all engineering structures of the Traffic Agency

<i>In Situ</i> Investigations for the Seismic Assessment of Existing Bridges

“…Managing authorities are nowadays interested in increasing the knowledge level of their structures' condition with the aim of using such data for a proper seismic assessment of the bridges [1,2,3,4] and the network in which they are included [5]. In most of the existing Bridge Management Systems, in-situ and laboratory investigations are not typically foreseen and rationally planned: referring to European experiences, in-situ material characterization aimed to a proper seismic assessment of large stocks of bridges is often not planned in countries with negligible seismic hazard [6,7] whereas increasing attention is spent in quakeprone areas [8] but providing the execution of limited visual in-situ inspections without quantitative investigations of materials' characteristics. In this respect, this work shows the main results related to an agreement between the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architecture Engineering of the University of Padova and the Veneto's regional roadway managing authority, Veneto Strade SpA, aimed to the seismic assessment of a representative stock of existing bridges located in the main roadway lines in the Veneto region.…”