Impacts of Climate Change on Scour-Vulnerable Bridges: Assessment Based on HYRISK
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 19, Issue 2
Abstract
More than 20% of the bridges in the United States were built more than 50 years ago, at a time in which intense precipitation events were much less common. However, very little work has been done on the use of scour risk-assessment models to assess how climate change increases bridge failure probabilities. This paper develops a risk-assessment framework based on HYRISK, a model developed to assess the probability of a bridge failure due to scour, and illustrates one way in which current engineering risk-assessment models can be used to quantify the additional risks and expected economic losses associated with a changing climate. Application of this framework to all bridges in the United States that carry vehicular traffic over water finds that economic losses due to climate change factors will increase by at least 15% over current losses and that the expected number of annual bridge failures in the United States will increase by at least 10% over current failures. Climate-based risk measures, such as those developed as part of this study, could be included in asset management systems to help state DOTs prioritize maintenance, operation, and replacement schedules.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the Federal Highway Administration through a University Transportation Center grant. The authors are grateful to the following colleagues from Georgia Tech, who helped answer questions related to performance-based design in earthquake engineering and scour methodologies: Drs. Bruce Ellingwood, Reggie DesRoches, Glenn Rix, and Terry Sturm. The authors are also grateful to Karthik Ramanathan (doctoral candidate at Georgia Tech) and Kevin Schwartz (engineer at the Georgia Department of Transportation), who helped to interpret fields from the NBI database.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 19 • Issue 2 • June 2013
Pages: 138 - 146
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 21, 2011
Accepted: Apr 9, 2012
Published online: May 15, 2013
Published in print: Jun 1, 2013
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