The road and railway transport network forms the backbone of transportation systems, the performance of which is largely dependent on the state of the critical infrastructure such as bridges. Bridges serve as a vital part of the infrastructure and have a very high asset value as capital to be protected. Many of these bridges are subjected to aging effects such as corrosion of internal steel reinforcement. The adverse aging effects in infrastructure is expected to accelerate in the future as a result of “climate change”. Moreover, the load demands on bridges have been constantly increasing in the past few decades, and many elder bridges are currently carrying heavier loads compared to their original design loads. It is expected that the increase in load demands will continue in the future, indicating faster aging and more stringent requirements on old bridge stock. There is currently a great demand for innovations in the maintenance of existing bridge infrastructure, including inspection, assessment, strengthening and repair, and management. In this Special Issue, we request high-quality original research articles focused on the state-of-the-art techniques and methods addressing the inspection, assessment, and upgrading of old bridge infrastructure. We welcome both theoretical and applied papers of high technical standard across various branches in construction sector, thus facilitating an awareness of techniques and methods applicable in bridges that may be relevant to other structures.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Advances in inspection, sensoring and structural health monitoring (SHM) methods and technologies for bridges; Advances in assessment methods, e.g., load-carrying capacity evaluation of reinforced concrete (RC) structures with corrosion damage, fatigue life assessment in welded steel bridges, probabilistic structural integrity assessment; New materials and techniques for strengthening and repair of existing bridges (e.g., application of shape memory alloys, advanced fiber-reinforced polymer composites); Long-term behavior, environmental durability, and fire performance of strengthening and repair systems; Design codes and guidelines; Recent case studies (e.g., lessons learned); Monitoring and field measurements on rehabilitated bridges; Advances in management of maintenance works and planning, e.g., risk-informed asset management (RIAM).