PSI - Issue 84

Pasquale Bencivenga et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 264–271

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indicating generally safe conditions, while 36% are in the second class, reflecting moderate attention needs. Around 12% of the bridges belong to the third class, showing notable deficiencies that may require closer monitoring, and the remaining 8% fall into the highest class, representing the most critical structures. Bridges in this upper category should be prioritized for detailed Level 4 assessments, targeted maintenance interventions, and potential retrofitting measures, ensuring that resources are focused where the risk is greatest. Overall, these results demonstrate that simplified, scalable assessment procedures, when complemented by the Priority Index, provide a practical and robust tool for managing large bridge inventories. The methodology supports informed decision-making for inspections, maintenance, retrofitting, and resource allocation, ensuring that the most critical cases receive timely attention. It is worth noting that the proposed procedure is sample-dependent and may require recalibration when applied to different bridge populations, since the normalization process inherently depends on the extreme values of I C within each dataset. Future work may extend the approach to other bridge typologies and incorporate more detailed inspection data to further refine safety evaluations. Acknowledgements This study was supported by FABRE – “Research consortium for the evaluation and monitoring of bridges, viaducts and other structures” (www.consorziofabre.it/en). Any opinion expressed in the paper does not necessarily reflect the view of the funder. References Bencivenga, P., Buratti, G., Cosentino, A., De Matteis, G., Morelli, F., Salvatore, W., et al, 2022. Evolution of Design Traffic Loads for Italian Road Bridges. Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the European Association on Quality Control of Bridges and Structures. EUROSTRUCT 2021. 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