The Italian Risk-Based approach for the development of an Integrated Safety Management System for Road Infrastructures and its Relations with innovative guidelines on the risk management of existing bridges

Abstract

It is estimated that road infrastructure and road surroundings are a contributing factor in more than 30% of crashes. Properly maintained infrastructures can reduce the probability of road traffic accidents, while "forgiving" roads can reduce the severity of accidents that do happen.The problems affecting the road assets are of various kinds and range from the characteristics of the route to the structural aspects, to those related to many other specific aspects (e.g. safety barriers).In order to improve the safety of infrastructures and with the aim of contributing significantly to the achievement of the objectives set at the European level in Italy, the new National Safety Agency for Railways and Roads (ANSFISA) is promoting the adoption of integrated Safety Management Systems (SMSs) for the verification and maintenance of assets by the managers of the road and motorway networks.The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the idea and the characteristics of the guidelines that ANSFISA is establishing to define new SMSs for road infrastructures, how they have been conceived starting from worldwide guidelines, how they will be certified by third party bodies, and how they manage to integrate with specific detailed rules concerning homogeneous types of assets (so-called “vertical domains”). In particular, the paper focuses on the relationship between the horizontal rules of the SMS and one of the vertical rules constituted by innovative Italian Guidelines on risk management of existing bridges.The proposed risk-based SMS model is founded on a multi-objective and multi-level approach.The SMSs, which will be certified by third-party bodies, allow the monitoring of the level of safety performance offered by each individual manager through Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs). The safety performance indicators that have been annually established are consistent with the Road State Safety Plan and with the European Vision Zero.