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.
Highlights
Bridges work as vital links in the highway networks
An extensive bridge inventory analysis is presented with the statistics of different structural and geometric parameters which intends to classify the major highway bridge types in British Columbia (BC) under the responsibility of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (BC MoT)
Fragility analysis is the first step to assess seismic resilience of any bridge structure, which is a measure of the robustness of the structure and its capability to restore its original performance after any catastrophic event [19,20]
Summary
Bridges work as vital links in the highway networks. The failure of bridges due to any natural calamity in a region can dramatically affect the transportation network causing substantial economic disturbance to that region [1,2,3]. Reliability based performance analysis of highway bridges should be carried out in order to assess the present vulnerability and resilience of structures This will ensure reliable and cost-effective rehabilitation techniques and control solutions to reduce potential damages during such events. Knowledge on the province’s bridges along with their structural and geometrical parameters would be of significant importance for the specific design and study of these control devices along with their implementations This inventory of different bridge parameters, seismic location of bridges and present health condition can provide a basis for the effective design of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems for the province’s Highway Bridges. Many of the bridges in this region are very old and may have reached the end of their service lives, and should be brought under continuous health monitoring This portfolio of bridges presented can significantly contribute towards the future study of SHM of bridges in BC and help establish cost effective and reliable solutions. This inventory would be a step towards the development of a National Bridge Inventory (NBI) for Canada that will eventually contribute in establishing an advanced Bridge Management System (BMS)
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