Future perspectives of standardization for a safe European transport infrastructure

Due to insufficient quality control during construction, progressive ageing and deterioration of materials, growing traffic loads and additional risks originating from climate change or man‐made hazards, suboptimal maintenance strategies, an increase of risks to the transport infrastructure seems inevitable. Incidents like the collapse of the Morandi Bridge cannot be singled out: in the last two decades, around 40 bridges in Europe have collapsed or got severely damaged.

Aiming to ensure the safety of the transport infrastructure through the improvement of maintenance policies across Europe, the European Commission opened the call for the Coordination and Support Action (CSA) “Monitoring and safety of transport infrastructure”. The main objective of this Action is to support the preparation of the mandate for CEN standards for maintenance and control of the European transport infrastructure. The execution of this Coordination and Support Action has been assigned to the IM‐SAFE project consortium.

This contribution presents the input proposed by the IM‐SAFE project [1] for future European standards for monitoring, data‐informed safety assessment and proactive maintenance policies for bridges and tunnels, considering the integration of digitalization as enabling technology.