Advanced multi-risk analysis of the overall status of river-crossing bridges in the Potenza Province (southern Italy): the Tech4You Research Project

The “Guidelines for the classification and management of risk, safety assessment and monitoring of existing bridges” (Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, Higher Council of Public Works, Annex DM 204/2022) are based on a general multilevel approach for the assessment of the attention class of existing river-crossing bridges.

This study reports the activities developed within the broader interest of the Tech4You Research Project, which aims at developing an innovative monitoring, assessment and management prototype system for the hydraulic, seismic, structure-foundation, and landslide risks of existing river bridges as follows: (i) a smart methodology for landslides census and landslide risk assessment, (ii) an application for the assessment of hydraulic and structural status of river-crossing bridges and, finally, (iii) design of a Decision Support System for emergency managers to identifying and prioritizing engineering actions.

The Pilot Area is embodied by the upper portion of the Agri river watershed belonging to the territory under the jurisdiction of the Potenza Province (southern Italy).

The Research Group focuses on structure-foundation, geomorphological and river engineering traits surveyed at the examined watercourses during a paramount field campaign of measurements. The hydraulic risk associated with river-crossing bridges was evaluated by considering overtopping or vertical freeboard lack, local and general scour phenomena. In this study, different hydrological analysis methods were evaluated for the assessment of the flood peak discharges characterizing the catchment areas pertaining to river-crossing bridges. Then, the bed sediments observed in the field were rigorously analyzed to characterize the grain-size distributions from HD imagery to obtain reliable values of hydraulic roughness coefficients related to the examined watercourses. Also, this study reports the findings of scour depths at both bridge piers and abutments. Further analyses will be performed based on the measurements obtained from the multi-risks monitoring system (i.e., instrumentation and data management). In addition, the effects of the seismic, structure-foundation, and landside risks on the examined river-crossing bridges were classified. 

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Next Generation EU - Italian NRRP, Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.5, call for the creation and strengthening of 'Innovation Ecosystems', building 'Territorial R&D Leaders' (Directorial Decree n. 2021/3277) - project Tech4You - Technologies for climate change adaptation and quality of life improvement, n. ECS0000009. This work reflects only the authors’ views and opinions, neither the Ministry for University and Research nor the European Commission can be considered responsible for them.