The Italian guidelines for risk and safety evaluation of existing bridges: A case study

• Published in: Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Digitalization and Sustainability pp. 2882 - 2889
• Main Authors: Rossi, P.P., Spinella, N., Recupero, A.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: CRC Press 2024
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 1032775602; 9781032775609; 1032770406; 9781032770406
• DOI: 10.1201/9781003483755-342

After some catastrophic collapses of bridges, detailed guidelines on risk classification and management, safety assessment and monitoring of existing bridges have been issued in Italy in 2020. This paper presents one of the first experimental applications of these guidelines to a large stock of bridges of two highways located in the Sicilian region (southern of Italy). The first three levels of analysis recommended by the Italian Bridges Guidelines have been applied, and they comprise census, visual inspection and calculation of the so-called class of attention of bridges. The results of these analyses made it possible to collect an experimental database of 358 in-service road bridges, which has been stored and catalogued by means of a customized web application. The web application allows to organize and check data, make queries, processing and visualizing the results. The experimental results are described in detail and analyzed, underlining both abilities and limitations of the examined levels of analysis of the Italian Bridges Guidelines. Moreover, a group defect index is introduced to classify groups of bridges for which the same types of defects with different level of extension and intensity have been detected. It is a prioritization method which allows to plan the same type of maintenance intervention on a group of bridges, more than on a single bridge, reducing economic and social costs.