National-Level Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on Local Scour under Bridge Piers in Sweden
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 29, Issue 2
Abstract
Scour is an important cause of bridge failures. This article investigates the impact of climate change on bridge-pier scour in all 246 Swedish catchment areas. Although a few previous studies assessed the impact of climate change on bridge-pier scour in other countries, none of those studies identified the locations within a certain country where climate change is projected to have the highest impacts on bridge scour. A novel national-level method, based on possibility theory, is proposed herein for addressing this gap. The proposed method provides answers to the following questions: For which catchment areas is the projected increase in pier-scour depth highest or lowest? What is the percentage of catchment areas where climate change is projected to have either a positive or negative impact on scour risk in all scenarios? Which climate change scenarios cause the highest or lowest increase in equilibrium scour depth? Although these questions are addressed particularly for Sweden, the proposed method is generally applicable for any other location. The catchment area Riebnesströmmen (located in the northernmost county in Sweden) was identified to have the highest increase in the equilibrium scour depth in all considered reference periods (up to increase), whereas the catchment area with the lowest increase varied depending on the considered reference period. The answers to the second question depended on the reference period and ranged from to and to for positive and negative impacts on scour risk, respectively. Interestingly, for the third question, it was found that higher-emission scenarios are not always more critical than lower-emission ones. These findings demonstrate the importance of performing national-level analyses of climate change impacts on infrastructure considering the different scenarios. The proposed method enables an efficient allocation of resources for adapting bridges to the increased scour risk due to climate change. Additionally, it can serve as a useful tool for quickly estimating the impact of climate change on bridge-pier scour for a certain location.
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Data Availability Statement
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All data used during the study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder data retention policies (SMHI 2021). Advanced Climate Change Scenario Service_Hydrology from Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (accessed December 10, 2021). Available from https://www.smhi.se/en/climate/future-climate/advanced-climate-change-scenario-service/hyd/.
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All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Swedish Transport Administration (Grant Nos. 2016-008 and 2019-027) and the strategic innovation program InfraSweden2030 (Grant No. 2018-00611), a joint effort of Sweden’s Innovation Agency (Vinnova), the Swedish Research Council (Formas), and the Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten). Any opinions, findings, or conclusions stated herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the financiers.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 29 • Issue 2 • June 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 12, 2022
Accepted: Nov 21, 2022
Published online: Feb 13, 2023
Published in print: Jun 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jul 13, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Analysis (by type)
- Bodies of water (by type)
- Bridge engineering
- Bridge failures
- Bridges
- Catchments
- Climate change
- Climates
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Disaster risk management
- Disasters and hazards
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Failure analysis
- Failures (by type)
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulic structures
- Hydraulics
- Man-made disasters
- Piers
- Ports and harbors
- Project management
- Scour
- Structural engineering
- Water and water resources
- Water management
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