New Method for Climate Change Resilience Rating of Highway Bridges

While the authors of current bridge management systems (BMSs) have noted the need for expanding the systems to include more functional aspects of bridge performance, to date no method has been proposed for the incorporation of bridge rating against climate change impacts. This paper presents a new procedure for extending the asset management scope for highway bridges to incorporate the bridges' resilience or vulnerability against climate change impacts. The proposed procedure draws from the projected demands of climate change-a worldwide phenomenon that is expected to produce its most dramatic impacts in cold regions. The following bridge resilience indicators are proposed: abutment washout, pier scour, abutment erosion, deck flooding, and abutment permafrost stability. The formulations for the proposed indicators require weights to be assigned to each indicator. The other requirement comprises capacity measures that indicate how well a bridge is equipped to withstand the projected climatic effects. The new procedure has been applied to 14 highway bridges in the Canadian Arctic to demonstrate how public investments in transportation infrastructure could be better managed and protected. The method comes with an Inspection Form that transportation agencies and their bridge inspectors can use for rating bridges on climate change resilience. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.