Highway bridge infrastructure in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada

Abstract

Some recent catastrophic impacts on highway bridges around the world have raised concerns for assessing the vulnerability of existing highway bridges in Canada. Rapid aging of bridge infrastructure coupled with increased traffic volume has made it crucial to establish an advanced Bridge Management System (BMS) for highway bridges. This paper aims at developing a highway bridge inventory for the province of British Columbia (BC) which is critical for efficient assessment of the existing structural health condition of the bridges, predicting their future deterioration, and prioritizing their maintenance and retrofitting works. This inventory is an extensive assemblage of data on highway bridges in BC under the responsibility of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (BC MoT) that includes more than 2500 highway bridges. It includes identification of the most common bridge types along with their location, structural and geometric parameters such as construction materials, bridge length, number of spans, deck width, skew angle, bridge pier, and foundation type, structural health condition rating and construction period. This information is of paramount importance for effective infrastructure management, proper rehabilitation solutions, and efficient design of a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Control System for enhancing structural resilience of highway bridges in BC. Several statistical analyses have been carried out for efficient utilization of the information available in the inventory for further research and analyses, as well as for developing a proper BMS for the province’s bridges.