PIARC Prize - Road Design, Construction, Maintenance and Operation - Bridge Monitoring and Data-Driven Structural Asset Management

Balancing transport productivity and risk of bridge damage requires sound engineering judgments. The Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) is closing the loop between the assumptions and rules underpinning heavy vehicle access to bridges, observed bridge responses and heavy vehicle behaviour through the application of bridge and traffic monitoring, weigh-in-motion, video, and data analytics, and engineering fundamentals.

Resilience of Road Network: A Preventive Approach to Bridge Seismic Retrofitting to Reduce Macro-Economic Impacts

Transport infrastructure networks are essential to ensure the economic development of nations and to improve the quality of life of citizens. For this reason, the focus on proper management of these systems has been increasing over the last 50 years. Since the end of the 90’s, an intense research and dissemination activity has been developed, aimed at encouraging and promoting the implementation of Asset Management (AM) principles in road organizations. The launch of the 55000 series ISO Standards [...]

Process for Evaluating Options for Bridges

The road infrastructure is a key asset with regard to the country’s socio-economic development. As such, it critically important to ensure the trafficability of the networks that make up the road system, with bridges playing an essential role in the system’s connectivity.

Bridge Design toward Improved Inspection and Maintenance

Bridges need to be designed so that they can be efficiently and effectively inspected and maintained during its lifetime. This requires that the aspects of inspections and maintenance are given adequate consideration in the design phase and not treated as an afterthought. All elements of a bridge must be designed such that one is able to inspect and maintain them, as well as to consider elements of the bridge that will need replacing during its lifetime.

Safety Assessment of Fire Damaged Cable-Stayed Bridge

During winter thunderstorm on the evening of December 2015, one of the longest upper cables of a cable-stayed bridge caught a fire. The 990-m long cable-stayed bridge consists of three cable-stayed spans of 200 m + 470 m + 200 m and two 60-m long end spans of simply-supported composite girders. The fire started almost 80m above the bridge deck and lasted more than two hours. As fire progressed, the cable was completely severed and two more cables were partially damaged. Because of fire and severe [...]