PSI - Issue 84

Galileo Tamasi et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 725–732

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2. Strategic integration of external road networks within the Safety Management System framework The transition toward a new era of highway renewal necessitates a paradigm shift where maintenance activities are no longer viewed as isolated technical events, but as significant operational changes within a complex ecosystem. In this context, the strategic opportunity to leverage the capacity of road networks external to the highway system - such as National and Provincial roads - is a core component of the Risk Assessment and Change Management processes. These processes are strictly aligned with the Safety Management Systems (SMS) for road infrastructures (see Fig.1) , which aim to standardize risk control and maintenance processes, particularly within the Italian regulatory framework (De Bartolomeo et al., 2023; Porretto et al., 2025). By embedding resilience into a risk-based approach, asset managers can better identify investment needs and prioritize roadworks where they are most critically required (Shah and Axelsen, 2016).

Fig. 1. Ansfisa’s Road SMS structure.

2.1. Case-by-case capacity analysis as a risk mitigation tool Within a modern safety framework, any modification to standard operating conditions triggers a formal Risk Assessment. The feasibility of diverting highway flows onto secondary networks must therefore be determined through a rigorous, case-by-case evaluation of the secondary network’s effective capacity. This analysis serves as a fundamental risk mitigation strategy, as identifying specific work zone risk factors is essential to alleviate their impact on crash severity (Li and Bai, 2009). Unlike highways, secondary roads often possess heterogeneous geometries and reliability issues that significantly influence their ability to absorb diverted volumes (Bazhanov, 2019). By quantifying the gap between current utilization and the theoretical saturation point of these external routes, the capacity analysis becomes a diagnostic tool that informs the Change Management process, ensuring that diverted traffic does not compromise the safety standards of the surrounding territory (Nlenanya and Smadi, 2018).