Applicative experience of Italian Guidelines for safety and monitoring of existing bridges

Abstract

Bridges are vital for transportation systems, as their collapse can pose serious threats to modern communities’ safety, well-being, and economy. Recently, specific Guidelines for the classification and risk management, safety assessment, and monitoring of existing bridges have been issued in Italy as mandatory code. The Guidelines need to be applied and tested to identify any drawbacks and highlight the main factors influencing their results. This paper proposes a reasoned application of the Guidelines in a provincial context. A representative sample of concrete structures located in the province of Parma under the management of a single entity was considered. The determination of the structural attention class allowed for considerations on some applicative difficulties of the Guidelines. Particular attention was given to the analysis of the most recurrent pathologies of the structures.