Comparison of risk-based methods for bridge scour management

Pregnolato, Maria; Giordano, Francesco; Prendergast, Luke; Vardanega, Paul; Limongelli, Maria Pina

Abstract

Scour is a significant cause of bridge failure, and resulting bridge closures are likely to generate significant disruption to infrastructure networks. The management of scour-susceptible bridges is a significant challenge for improving transport resilience, but tends to be heuristic and qualitative. Such assessments often suffer from insufficient knowledge of key factors and require assumptions, which may increase their estimation and relative uncertainty. Analysis of publicly available technical documents reveals that various definitions of "risk" are adopted, as well as multiple approaches are applied. This paper has three objectives: (i) to illustrate the concept of risk in bridge scour management; (ii) to propose a simple scoring system to analyse existing risk-based approaches to manage bridge scour; and (iii) to analyse and compare such approaches on the basis of the obtained scores. A sample of nine documents containing bridge scour risk assessment practices or approaches was analysed using the developed rating system.

Citation

Pregnolato, M., Giordano, F., Prendergast, L., Vardanega, P., & Limongelli, M. P. (2023). Comparison of risk-based methods for bridge scour management. Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, https://doi.org/10.1080/23789689.2023.2175141

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 27, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Deposit Date: Mar 16, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 16, 2023
• Journal: Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
• Print ISSN: 2378-9689
• Electronic ISSN: 2378-9697
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23789689.2023.2175141
• Keywords: Bridge; Scour; Risk; Management; Transport resilience
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/18526432
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23789689.2023.2175141