3-Day Workshop in Lisbon

A 3-day workshop will be organized in Lisbon, in September 26-28, to discuss the impact of climate change on the health of bridges. It includes scientific meetings, a seminar, and a roundtable, namely:

26th: Scientific Meetings to discuss the case study
27th (9-13h): Seminar
27th (15-17h): Roundtable with the main Portuguese bridge authorities

  • “Analyzing climate change impacts on infrastructure in Sweden”, Lund University, Amro Nasr
  • “IP’s Bridges and Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Strategy”, Infraestruturas de Portugal, Sérgio Pereira, Paulo Melo, and Luísa Soares
  • “Achievements and challenges in the long-term performance of prestressed concrete bridges, including the impact of climate changes – the case study of the Lezíria Bridge”, Brisa – Autoestradas de Portugal, Hélder Sousa e Cláudia Onofre

28th: Scientific Meetings

The main findings of this workshop will be summarized and published in the form of an international publication.

A Road for Adaptation of Bridges to Climate Change

Seminar: Auditorium Agostinho da Silva, Lusófona University | September 27, 2022 | Lisbon, Portugal | Public and free access

This seminar intends to bring together experts from the bridge engineering field and academia, climatologists, bridge authorities, and decision makers to understand the impacts of climate change on the health of bridges and to propose cost-effective adaptation strategies.

9:00 – 9:30
Presentation of ClimaBridge Project
Elói Figueiredo, Full Professor
Faculdade de Engenharia, Lusófona University

Part I
Moderators: Luís O. Santos (LNEC), Ionut Moldovan (UL), and Emrah Erduran (OsloMet)

9:30 – 10:00
What we do know about climate change in Portugal
Filipe Duarte Santos, Full Professor and Researcher
Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa

10:00 – 10:30
IP’s Bridges and Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Strategy
Sérgio Pereira, Paulo Melo, and Luísa Soares
Infraestruturas de Portugal

10:30 – 11:00
Bridges in a changing climate
António Adão da Fonseca, Full Professor and Bridge Designer

11:00 – 11:30 | Coffee break

Part II
Moderators: Dimitrios Kraniotis (OsloMet), Hugo Rebelo (UL), and Cândida Rocha (UL)

11:30 – 12:00
National strategy for adaptation to climate change
Nuno Lacasta, Presidente
APA – Portuguese Environmental Agency

12:00 – 12:30
How to perform climate adaptation at local level?
Joana Pinto Balsemão, Councillor
Municipality of Cascais

Part III
12:30 – 13:00 | Discussion

Registration

Even though the entrance is free of charge, you are requested to fill up a registration form.

Organizing Committee

Cândida Rocha, Dimitrios Kraniotis, Eloi Figueiredo, Emrah Erduran, Hugo Rebelo, Ionut Moldovan, Luís Oliveira Santos, Vítor Antunes

Figueiredo, E.; Moldovan, I.; Santos, L.O.; Erduran, E.; Kraniotis, D.; Rebelo, H.; Antunes, V.; Rocha, C. (2022). A Road for Adaptation of Bridges to Climate Change: Conclusions. Seminar, ClimaBridge Project, September 27, 2022, Lusófona University, Lisbon. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23011.63523.

Download the conclusions

3-day Scientific Meetings at OsloMet

Seminar

Title

On the three decades of SHM and how it can prevent the impacts of climate change on bridges

Presenters

Eloi Figueiredo and Ionut Moldovan

Date

February 17, 2022

Summary

Bridges play a crucial role in modern societies, regardless of their culture, geographical location, or economic development. The safest, economical and most resilient bridges are those that are well managed and maintained. In the last three decades, structural health monitoring (SHM) has been a promising tool in management activities of bridges as potentially it permits one to perform condition assessment to reduce uncertainty in the planning and designing of maintenance activities as well as to increase the service performance and safety of operation.

The general idea has been the transformation of massive data obtained from monitoring systems and numerical models into meaningful information. To deal with large amounts of data and perform the damage identification automatically, SHM has been cast in the context of the statistical pattern recognition (SPR) paradigm, where machine learning plays an important role. Meanwhile, recent technologies have unveiled alternative sensing opportunities and new perspectives to manage and observe the response of bridges.

On the other hand, climate change is currently one of the biggest concerns for the health of bridges. Although the uncertainty associated with the magnitude of the change involved is large, the fact that our climate is changing is unequivocal. As a result, making bridges resilient to climate change is a priority. A well-planned early intervention may save money and lives.

Therefore, the main goal of this presentation is to point out key developments in research and applications of the SPR paradigm observed in bridges in the last three decades, including developments in sensing, machine learning and finite element modeling for data analysis, and to present perspectives of how the SHM technology can be used to prevent potential impacts of climate change on the structural health of our bridges.

Scientific Meetings

5th Meeting

On the 17th of December, 2021, took place remotely the 5th meeting in order to set the dates of the workshops (in Oslo and Lisbon) and the scientific meetings as well as to draft the report on the impact of climate change on health of bridges.