PSI - Issue 84

Ilaria Catapano et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 119–126

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scenarios and synthetic data to simulate the geophysical response of shallow and deep bridge foundations across different geological contexts. In particular, the commercial finite-element (FEM) approach ERTLab (Morelli & Labrecque, 1996; Novo et al., 2012) was used for creating complex 3D electrode sequences, while the open-source software ResIPy (Blanchy et al., 2020) was used to generate the forward models. Synthetic full-wave GPR data were generated using gprMax (Warren et al., 2016), a simulation software widely employed by the GPR community. Furthermore, microwave tomography was adopted to process GPR data and obtain a focused image of the scenario under test, in cases where radargrams lacked clear evidence of the foundation depth (Catapano et al., 2019). 3. Results 3.1. State of the art of GPR and ERT for bridge integrity and interaction with landslides Recent literature confirms a systematic growth in the use of Non-Destructive Testing, with GPR and ERT emerging as key techniques for the assessment of bridges, landslides, and their interaction (Fig. 1). However, virtually no systematic investigations explicitly target bridge–landslide interactions with either GPR or ERT. Moreover, integrated protocols capable of merging structural and geomorphological information across different spatial and temporal scales are still missing. Nonetheless, a review of the scientific literature demonstrates that GPR and ERT can be complementary techniques, effectively employed if planned in a coordinated manner, supported by numerical models, and combined with rigorous data inversion methodologies (Giocoli et al., in press; and references therein).

Fig. 1. Temporal publication trends for applications in landslide, bridge, bridge foundation, and bridge-landslide studies. A) GPR. B) ERT.

GPR has reached a relatively mature stage in the investigation of bridge superstructures. High-frequency antennas and multichannel systems are routinely employed to map reinforcement, deck thickness, moisture ingress, delamination, and corrosion in both concrete and masonry bridges, often in combination with laser scanning, photogrammetry, thermography, acoustic techniques, and load testing. However, applications to bridge foundations and landslide bodies remain comparatively limited and strongly site-specific. Borehole or cross-hole configurations,