PSI - Issue 84

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ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 264–271

© 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Conference Keywords: Existing Bridges, Structural risk assessment, Bridge technical codes, Preliminary Assessment, Safety index Abstract The structural safety of the infrastructural assets, and in particular of bridges, is a critical issue in Italy given the age of many in service structures as well as their generally poor conservation state. Many of these structures were built in the second half of the last century according to design criteria for assessing structural demand and capacity that may now be considered outdated. This may result in the need to undertake significant maintenance and upgrading interventions and consequently to perform numerous accurate structural assessments, with considerable economic and time demands, especially when dealing with large stocks of bridges. Within the framework of the Italian Guidelines for existing bridges, in this study a simplified yet rational methodology for prioritizing such a complex process is proposed. The method results in a combined index integrating a generalized comparison between historical and current design codes with the observed structural defectiveness. The methodology is applied to 50 representative bridges in the Campania region, Southern Italy, considering geometrical features, construction period, and structural typology. The results demonstrate that the proposed index may effectively support the prioritization of bridges for detailed inspections or interventions, providing a robust decision-making tool at the network level. III Fabre Conference: Existing Bridges, Viaducts, and Tunnels: Research, Innovation, and Applications Prioritizing Accurate Structural Assessment of Existing Bridges within Large Inventories Pasquale Bencivenga a *, Mattia Zizi a , Costantino Dell’Aversano a and Gianfranco De Matteis a a Department of Architecture and Industrial Design, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Aversa, Italy

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: pasquale.bencivenga@unicampania.it

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Conference 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.06.035