FLOOD RESILIENCE (FONDECYT de iniciación, Reference project number: 11240171)

The Forensic Local scOur assessment fOr briDge resilience (FLOOD RESILIENCE) project aims to develop a novel and comprehensive probabilistic framework for evaluating bridge scour risk. Although scour is the leading cause of bridge failures worldwide, the current practices for bridge scour risk management are quite inefficient (they are often based on expensive, potentially inaccurate, and time-consuming visual inspections). Moreover, current scour risk assessment procedures do not allow an explicit quantification of the expected direct and indirect losses due to the occurrence of multiple future floods with different intensities. The latter motivated the Principal Investigator (PI) to follow a numerical and modelling approach to deal with and overcome the limitations of current bridge scour risk procedures. The FLOOD RESILIENCE project will be articulated in three interdependent Work Packages (WPs), which are strongly connected to the measurable objectives. WP1 includes the review of probabilistic frameworks for flood modelling (objective 1), focusing on the streamflow’s short- and long-range dependence behaviour. Stochastic analysis of streamflow time-series will be performed with the intention of reproducing and generating synthetic data to compute the scour depth probabilistically (scour hazard). WP2 will address the definition of a modelling strategy for bridge vulnerability assessment that relies on nonlinear structural analysis of different bridge typologies subjected to scour (objective 2). In consequence, numerical modelling will be performed. Considering different bridge typologies will allow the exportation of project results to other bridges in Chile and worldwide (i.e., impacting not only the selected case studies but also the entire infrastructure network). WP3 will consider results from WP1 and WP2 to develop a probabilistic methodology to estimate the current and future risk of bridge collapse due to scour (objective 3). The risk will be computed considering the three basic components: hazard, vulnerability, and exposure. Future risks of bridge collapse will consider the effects of climate variability on hydraulic loads through different possible scenarios and Monte Carlo simulations. This novel methodology will account for both the erosional and refilling part of the scour process.