Vulnerability of bridges to scour:insights from an international expert elicitation workshop

Lamb, Rob and Aspinall, Willy and Odbert, Henry and Wagener, Thorsten (2017) Vulnerability of bridges to scour:insights from an international expert elicitation workshop. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 17 (8). pp. 1393-1409. ISSN 1561-8633

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Abstract

Scour (localised erosion) during flood events is one of the most significant threats to bridges over rivers and estuaries, and has been the cause of numerous bridge failures, with damaging consequences. Mitigation of the risk of bridges being damaged by scour is therefore important to many infrastructure owners, and is supported by industry guidance. Even after mitigation, some residual risk remains, though its extent is difficult to quantify because of the uncertainties inherent in the prediction of scour and the assessment of the scour risk. This paper summarises findings from an international expert workshop on bridge scour risk assessment that explores uncertainties about the vulnerability of bridges to scour. Two specialised structured elicitation methods were applied to explore the factors that experts in the field consider important when assessing scour risk and to derive pooled expert judgements of bridge failure probabilities that are conditional on a range of assumed scenarios describing flood event severity, bridge and watercourse types and risk mitigation protocols. The experts' judgements broadly align with industry good practice, but indicate significant uncertainty about quantitative estimates of bridge failure probabilities, reflecting the difficulty in assessing the residual risk of failure. The data and findings presented here could provide a useful context for the development of generic scour fragility models and their associated uncertainties.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1900
Subjects:
?? EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES(ALL) ??
ID Code:
87371
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
15 Aug 2017 10:06
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
17 Sep 2023 02:07