Risk and Resilience of Bridges and Networks

The main emphasis of this course is on the understanding of the fundamental principles to help the learner to confidently build up their knowledge in this specialist subject. Examples and practical applications will be presented to illustrate the main components of risk and resilience, i.e. hazard actions, typology of bridges, damage modes, fragility/vulnerability analysis, loss assessment (direct/indirect), restoration, mitigation measures and decision-making for networks.

Why Enrol?

• Demonstrates state-of-the-art approaches and tools on risk and resilience-based management of infrastructure exposed to diverse hazards
• Gives understanding and clarity on vulnerability assessment of infrastructure assets
• Gives delegates the knowledge and skills to be able to perform risk and resilience analysis for decision-making and better allocation of available resources
• Hone managerial and prioritisation skills in civil engineering application on the basis of interdisciplinary approaches involving knowledge from engineering, finance, risk and insurance 

Background

The exposure of bridges and transportation networks to natural hazards is proven to have severe consequences on world economies and societies. Therefore, risk and resilience assessment of these assets to extreme events and sequences of diverse hazards is of paramount importance for maintaining their functionality and continuous operation even after severe natural and anthropogenic hazards.

This training course starts at 09:00 and finishes at 17:00 with refreshment breaks mid-morning and afternoon, plus lunch. All timings, except the start time, are approximate and may be adjusted to suit natural breaks in the lesson.

Lecture 1 - Introduction

This lecture will classify the natural hazards and disasters and will describe their consequences on bridges and transportation networks, including examples from past events in the UK and worldwide. Design codes and existing standards including assessment and inspection options will be presented. Hazard actions (floods, earthquakes, ground movements and other accidental actions), failure modes and design aspects of key structural components will be outlined. The definitions for hazard, exposure, vulnerability, risk, losses (direct/indirect), resilience will be given, along with representative examples. The general framework for the risk and resilience-based design and management will be introduced at the component level (bridge) and at the network level (motorway).

Lecture 2 - Vulnerability assessment of bridges

The characteristics that define the typology of bridges will be presented with relevant examples, including the description of damage states. The concepts of fragility analysis for single and multiple hazards will be presented, including methods and examples based on empirical, numerical, expert elicitation and experimental approaches. The effect of environmental deterioration and mitigation on the fragility of bridges will be highlighted. The concept of vulnerability curves, which are based on repair ratios and correlation of damage to loss of functionality, will be described.

• Assessment unit 1: Worked example on vulnerability and/or multiple-choice questions

Lecture 3 - Risk analysis

In this lecture, the methodology for risk analysis for portfolios of bridges and transportation networks to given hazards will be provided, and examples will be presented. Loss assessments will be in terms of direct (physical) and indirect (traffic or business interruption) losses.

Lecture 4 - Resilience analysis and mitigation measures

The methodology for the quantification of resilience will be presented, including the robustness of the structure, the rapidity of restoration and relevant resilience indices. Examples will be also provided and discussed. Available restoration models for single and multiple hazards accounting for costs and rapidity of the restoration will be presented, as a tool for efficient mitigation strategies. The scope of the latter is to prioritise the exposed assets and facilitate the decision making for restoration/retrofitting on network scale.

• Assessment unit 2: Worked example on resilience and/or multiple-choice questions

Tutors

Dr Stergios A Mitoulis, Associate Professor, Dipl Eng, MSc, PhD, M.ASCE, EAEE, SECED, IABSE, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is the leader of the infrastructuResilience initiative. Over the last ten years he has supervised and co-supervised seven doctoral and postdoctoral students. He has published extensively with a publication record exceeding 100 papers in leading scientific journals and international conferences. His expertise is the resilience-based design and assessment of infrastructure assets and networks and in particular bridges and transport infrastructure exposed to extreme natural and human-induced hazards, dynamic loads, hydraulic effects, creep, shrinkage and thermal effects. He is a member of the BSI B/525/10 CEN/TC250/HG-Bridges, the BSI Mirror Group of Eurocodes and UK delegate of the BSI (CEN/TC250/SC8 Work Group 6, Bridges) for the design and retrofit of bridges, the BSI committee B/525/8 and B/538/5 and the Workgroup 11 of the EAEE. He provides consulting and is member of the Working group of Highways England on “highway bridges exposed to hydraulic actions”, which aims at updating the DMRB documents on bridge scour. SM was and still is the Supervisor and co-supervisor of European projects, the last commenced in 2019, while has been the Principal Investigator (PI) of two KTP (Innovate UK) projects and a proof-of-concept project with Network Rail-UK on the monitoring of environmental hazards on infrastructure. SM has worked as Co-PI and researcher for another 11 research projects, relevant to bridge and networks resilience. He has editorial and reviewing responsibilities in reputed journals (more than 30). SM has served as evaluator for EU proposals and research grants within the UK (EPSRC), Canada and Latvia. He is an active consultant for industries in the UK and Belgium.

Dr Sotirios Argyroudis, is Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow, at the Dpt of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Surrey, and Senior Teaching/Research Staff at the Dpt of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University. Dr Argyroudis is civil engineer and geologist. He has 17 years of research experience in the field of infrastructure and geotechnical engineering, with focus on the risk and vulnerability analysis of infrastructure assets and networks exposed to diverse hazards (flood/scour, earthquake, landslides, tsunamis, ground movements). He has authored and co-authored over 100 reports and papers in scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters and participated in 16 research projects. He is a member of the Working Group 13 of the EAEE on assessment, design and resilience of industrial facilities and vice-chair of the IABSE Task Group on design requirements for infrastructure resilience.

This course aims to promote:

• Understanding and quantification of the hazards that the transport assets are exposed to and the principles of the risk and resilience analysis
• Understanding of the methods of vulnerability and quantitative risk analysis (QRA) of bridges and transport infrastructure networks exposed to diverse hazards
• Understanding of the available and state-of-the-art practices and methods in resilience-based design and assessment of critical infrastructure

The course also includes assessment units with online polls and hand calcs.

This course is highly recommended for:

• Bridge, structural, geotechnical and transportation engineers
• Owners and operators of highway/railway networks
• Engineers/decision makers working for Boroughs and County councils
• Consulting and design offices
• Insurance and Re-insurance companies
• Researchers/academics
• Those who want to improve their skills on vulnerability, risk and resilience analysis of infrastructure