PSI - Issue 84

Adriana Marra et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 661–668

662

Keywords: Bridge Informative Modelling (BrIM); Visual Programming Language (VPL); Inspection and maintenance; Risk Assessment; Data processing

1. Introduction The safety and management of existing infrastructure, particularly bridges and viaducts, are key topics in technical, scientific, and institutional debates. This is especially true in light of the damage and collapses that have occurred on national and international infrastructure networks (D’Angelo et al. 2025, Zang et al 2022). These events have highlighted critical issues related to intrinsic factors, such as design weaknesses, material degradation, stress phenomena, and maintenance deficiencies, as well as environmental conditions linked to climate change and extreme events, which can accelerate degradation processes and compromise the durability of structures. As a result, there is an increasing need to adapt and update current regulations and develop new approaches and tools to effectively support infrastructure management authorities in their inspection, monitoring, management, and maintenance activities. In response to these requirements, Italy adopted the Guidelines for the classification, management, safety assessment, and monitoring of existing bridges in 2020 (Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti - Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici 2022). Updated in 2022, the Guidelines serve as the main regulatory and operational reference for the safety management of national infrastructure assets. The Guidelines propose a standardized, multi-level procedural framework that includes census and location of structures, followed by visual inspections, detailed investigations, and assessments, aiming to identify, classify, and manage the risk of existing works (Rossi et al 2023, Gara et al 2025, Natali et al 2023). The objective of the Guidelines procedure consists of the assessment of the Attention Class (AC) of the assets based on the main relevant risks. These risks include structural risks associated with static and foundation aspects due to service loads, as well as risks related to the surrounding environment, such as seismic, hydraulic, and geological concerns. These risks are assessed through a combined analysis of hazard, vulnerability, and exposure, starting from a structured set of primary and secondary parameters, to determine the structure's overall risk by identifying its overall AC. The Guidelines emphasize the importance of promoting the digitization of infrastructure and related processes, encouraging the creation of interoperable information models that can collect all available information in a unified manner, ensuring efficient and transparent management and maintenance processes over time. The growing trend toward digitalization has prompted investigations into the potential of Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a process for managing information and assets, as well as a decision-support tool, throughout the entire life cycle of buildings (National Institute of Building Sciences 2024). The advantages of BIM have encouraged extending this approach to the domain of infrastructure, particularly bridges, with the development of Bridge Information Models (BrIM). The growing attention to these aspects has led to the definition of specific information modeling requirements for infrastructures (GdL IFC Bridge Italia 2020), as well as the development of workflows capable of representing their geometric, material, and functional complexity in a structured manner (Costin et al 2021, Marra et al 2021, Conti et al 2022). Concurrently, the integration of BrIM and automation techniques, particularly those based on visual programming languages (VPL), has enhanced not only parametric modeling processes but also information management and updating (Collao et al 2021). Several studies have underscored the potential of VPLs in facilitating bidirectional exchange between information models and external databases or worksheets (Cavieres-Lagos et al 2024, Marra et al 2025). These studies have demonstrated that VPLs can improve information consistency, reduce errors, and minimize redundancies that are characteristic of manual approaches. They have also demonstrated the potential of BrIMs not only as repositories of information but also as instruments to support health monitoring, management, and decision-making processes for existing structures (Sanseverino et al 2024, Meoni et al 2024, Spallarossa et al 2024). This contribution fits into this context, proposing a methodological workflow for semi automatically updating BrIM models based on data derived from census, inspection, and defect forms as outlined in the Guidelines, which have been digitized and structured in an online relational database. Dedicated scripts facilitate the semi-automatic updating of information from the database to the information model. These scripts enable the automatic assessment of structural and foundation AC in a parametric environment through the controlled reprocessing of database data. This contribution aims to demonstrate how integrating relational databases, information automation, and BrIM modeling can transform the digital model from an information hub into an advanced tool for sharing and