BIM Solutions for Existing Bridges Management

The management of existing bridges is a current and complex issue, both from administrative and technical points of view. It must respond to different needs to maintain the efficiency of road networks and to guarantee the safety of the road users. Existing bridges are often aged structures, subjected to degradation phenomena due to a lack of maintenance over time and subjected to heavy traffic loads. The definition of shared and standardized procedures to guarantee their correct management with a rational allocation of economic and temporal resources appeared necessary to many administrative bodies. To meet this need, the Italian Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports published the “Guidelines for the classification and management of risk, the safety assessment and the monitoring of existing bridges” in 2020, a useful tool for the management bodies in their decision-making starting from knowledge and arriving to final assessment and maintenance. The adoption of Building Informative Models of infrastructures is strongly recommended to build information repositories, allowing the sharing and the interoperability of data acquired in various periods and through various activities on the structures. The use of BIM is applied to the existing case study of La Botte bridge close to Pisa.