A Roadmap for an Integrated Assessment Approach to the Adaptation of Concrete Bridges to Climate Change

Bridges play a crucial role in modern societies, regardless of their culture, geographical location, or economic development. The safest, most economical, and most resilient bridges are those that are well managed and maintained. Recently, climate change has been posed as one of the greatest concerns for the health of bridges. Although the uncertainty associated with the magnitude of the change is large, the fact that our climate is changing is unequivocal. As a result, making bridges resilient to climate change is a priority for the authorities. A well-planned early intervention may save lives and money. Until now, the focus of scientific research has mostly been on the climate science, but any practical plan for the adaptation of bridges has to be rooted in other disciplines, including physics, chemistry, engineering, economics, and finance. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to review the work already done from climate change to bridges and set a roadmap for an integrated assessment approach to the adaptation of bridges to climate change. This approach is grounded in a probabilistic- and physics-based framework able to prioritize bridge adaptation measures as a function of bridge location, climate scenario, impact, vulnerability, risk, and cost in order to assist the authorities in the decision-making process. Because adaptation to climate change is highly context-specific, this approach is mainly focused on concrete bridges. Structural health monitoring technology is proposed as a mechanism for assessing and continuously evaluating the structural condition of bridges and for triggering adaptation measures as a function of the predicted severity of climate change.