The changing climate with resulting more extreme weather events will likely impact infrastructure assets and services. This phenomenon can present direct threats to the assets as well as significant indirect effects for those relying on the services those assets deliver. Such threats are path-dependent and place-specific, as they strongly depend on current and future climate variability, location, asset design life, function and condition. One key question is how climate change is likely to increase both the probability and magnitude of extreme weather events under different scenarios of climate change. To address this issue, this paper investigates selected effects of climate change and their consequences on structural performance, in the context of evolving loading scenarios in three different continental regions: Europe, North America, and Asia. The aim is to investigate some main place-specific changes of the exposure in terms of intensity/frequency of extreme events as well as the associated challenges, considering some recent activities of members of the IABSE TG6.1. Climate change can significantly affect built infrastructure and the society by increasing the occurrence and magnitude of extreme events and increasing potential losses. Therefore, specific relationships relating hazard levels and structural vulnerability to climate change effects should be determined.

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One major issue when considering the effects of climate change is to understand, qualify and quantify how natural hazards and the changing climate will likely impact infrastructure assets and services as it strongly depends on current and future climate variability, location, asset design life, function and condition. So far, there is no well-defined and agreed performance indicator that isolates the effects of climate change for structures. Rather, one can mention some key considerations on how climate change may produce changes of vulnerability due to physical and chemical actions affecting structural durability or changes of the exposure in terms of intensity/frequency of extreme events. This paper considers these two aspects and associated challenges, considering some recent activities of members of the IABSE TG6.1.

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Because of the competing demands for scarce resources (funds, manpower, etc) national road owners are required to monitor the condition and performance of infrastructure elements through an effective inspection and assessment regime as part of an overall asset management strategy, the primary aim being to keep the asset in service at minimum cost. A considerable amount of information is then already available through existing databases and other information sources. Various analyzes have been carried out to identify the different forms of deterioration affecting infrastructures, to investigate the parameters controlling their susceptibility to, and rate of, deterioration. This paper proposes such an approach by building a transition matrix directly from the condition scores. The Markov assumption is used stating that the condition of a facility at one inspection only depends on the condition at the previous inspection. With this assumption, the present score is the only one which is taken into account to determine the future of the facility. The objective is then to combine nested sampling with a Markov-based estimation of the condition rating of infrastructure elements to put some confidence bounds on Markov transition matrices, and ultimately on corresponding maintenance costs.@en

This paper presents an optimization framework for highway infrastructure elements that integrates risk profiles (for infrastructures) and economic aspects. One main goal is to assess the necessary additional effort to satisfy performance constraints under different scenarios of climate change. In order to be easily deployable by national road administrations (NRAs), this framework is built in such a way that it can be embedded into asset management systems that include an inventory of the asset, inspection strategies (to report element conditions and safety defects) and decision-making for funds allocation. Using the inventory of the asset and condition assessment as input, the method aims to determine some degradation profiles for bridge components, retaining walls and steep embankments. The method to determine the degradation process is detailed so that any infrastructure manager can determine their own deterioration processes based on the inventory and condition assessment of their stock. Combining degradation of highway infrastructures with a risk analysis, this paper presents an optimization framework to determine optimal management strategies.

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