New Course Proposal: Risk and Resilience of Bridges and Networks

About the course

The exposure of bridges and transportation networks to natural hazards is proven to have severe consequences on world economies and societies. Therefore, risk and resilience assessment of these assets to extreme events and sequences of diverse hazards is of paramount importance for maintaining their functionality and continuous operation even after severe natural and anthropogenic hazards.

This course will provide a systematic introduction to the concept of risk and resilience assessment of bridges and transportation networks. The main emphasis of this course is on the understanding of the fundamental principles to help the learner to confidently build up their knowledge in this specialist subject. Examples and practical applications will be presented to illustrate the main components of risk and resilience, i.e. hazard actions, typology of bridges, damage modes, fragility/vulnerability analysis, loss assessment (direct/indirect), restoration, mitigation measures and decision-making for networks.

About the modules

Lecture 1 - Introduction to risk & resilience of bridges and networks
This lecture will classify the natural hazards and disasters and will describe their consequences on bridges and transportation networks, including examples from past events in the UK and worldwide. Design codes and existing standards including assessment and inspection options will be presented. Hazard actions (floods, earthquakes, ground movements and other accidental actions), failure modes and design aspects of key structural components will be outlined. The definitions for hazard, exposure, vulnerability, risk, losses (direct/indirect), resilience will be given, along with representative examples. The general framework for the risk and resilience-based design and management will be introduced at the component level (bridge) and at the network level (motorway).
Lecture 2 - Vulnerability assessment of bridges
The characteristics that define the typology of bridges will be presented with relevant examples, including the description of damage states. The concepts of fragility analysis for single and multiple hazards will be presented, including methods and examples based on empirical, numerical, expert elicitation and experimental approaches. The effect of environmental deterioration and mitigation on the fragility of bridges will be highlighted. The concept of vulnerability curves, which are based on repair ratios and correlation of damage to loss of functionality, will be described.
Assessment unit 1: Worked example on vulnerability and/or multiple-choice questions
Lecture 3 - Risk analysis
In this lecture, the methodology for risk analysis for portfolios of bridges and transportation networks to given hazards will be provided, and examples will be presented. Loss assessments will be in terms of direct (physical) and indirect (traffic or business interruption) losses.
Lecture 4 - Resilience analysis and mitigation measures
The methodology for the quantification of resilience will be presented, including the robustness of the structure, the rapidity of restoration and relevant resilience indices. Examples will be also provided and discussed. Available restoration models for single and multiple hazards accounting for costs and rapidity of the restoration will be presented, as a tool for efficient mitigation strategies. The scope of the latter is to prioritise the exposed assets and facilitate the decision making for restoration/retrofitting on network scale.
Assessment unit 2: Worked example on resilience and/or multiple-choice questions