PSI - Issue 44

Agnese Natali et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 44 (2023) 2012–2019 Agnese Natali et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

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meaning high quantities of bridges. Hence, organizing all the gathered data and having an instrument to support the execution of the process to the evaluation of the WaC may be useful to speed up the process and to automatically organize a database of the data, to be used also for the future activities. In this regard, the new early-developed software INSPICIO developed by the collaboration of the Authors is described, being a powerful instrument to support all the territorial activities till the evaluation of WaC and the organization of the operations and decisions after it. 2. Risk classification according to the Italian Guidelines The first three levels of the Guidelines are applied to all the structures, and aim at the evaluation of the WaC of each bridge for each considered risk: the structural, the seismic, the geological and the hydraulic one. In particular: the Level 0 foresees the execution of a census of all the bridges, to gather at least the minimum relevant data for the classification; the Level 1 is focused on the execution of the visual inspections, which are necessary to fill some of the missing data from Level 0, if any, and to evaluate the conservation status of the structure in terms of possible structural damages, and of the context, for the hydro-geological risk; the Level 2 gathers all the information from the previous levels for the final aim of determining the WaC for each risk, and then the global one. 2.1. The Level 0 The Level 0 is about gathering at least the sufficient data to smoothly proceed with the classification. Some of these data can be filled, completed or checked also during the visual inspections foreseen in Level 1. To support this activity, the Guidelines provide some paper forms with an organized indication of all the data for the census. In addition to this, the Operating Instructions suggest a specific list of the very necessary ones for the classification procedure: they are all referred to the structure and its context, being, as an instance, the structural type and scheme, the material of the main structural elements, the design and building period, the main geometrical dimensions, the traffic data, the presence of active landslides, news about possible previously happened hydrological phenomena (as flooding), etc. Gathering all these pieces of information is a very important step, not only for the process of classification, but also to build an organized database with all the relevant data of the existing bridges. Indeed, in the next years, when the classification process will be initialized and completed for the first round, these relevant data may be accompanied with the info from the Level 1 inspections and from the Level 2 classification, with the correlated ongoing activities planned after it, highlighting all the relevant issues and constituting a huge database about the current status of the bridges. For each owner, it is a powerful instrument for the management and control of its own structures. 2.2. The Level 1 The Level 1 consists in the execution of the visual inspections, with the aim of assessing the conservation status of the bridge in relation to the structural and seismic risk, and to have a view of the contest and of the possible active hydro-geological phenomena. Also in this case, the Guidelines provide some paper forms, differently structured for each risk, where the information to be collected are well organized to support the inspectors through all the procedure. As an example, for the structural risk a general form is provided to put the main information about the structure (structural type, material, main geometrical dimensions, etc.), that may be already gathered from the Level 0 (in any case, during the inspection it is also possible to check the data previously acquired). In this general form it is also possible to report the presence of a critical situation, which means the presence of an acting damaging phenomena which may seriously induce the collapse of the structure or of one of its portions. This possibility allows to immediately alert the road manager after the inspection. Besides the general information, the conservation status of the bridge is assessed through pointing out the possible damages observed in each structural element. For each component, depending on the material it is made of, a form is provided with a list of all the possible detectible damages. Three parameters define each damage: severity “G”, intensity “k1” and extension “k2”. Severity is assigned and represents the intrinsic criticality which characterize the source of damage. The intensity and extension parameters have to be given by the inspectors basing on, respectively, the actual level of gravity and propagation of the defect in the component (the range values for