4th European Conference on Flood Risk Management

The special session 'Flooding impact to infrastructure networks and bridges: the challenge of scour' will take place virtually on Wednesday 23 June 2021 from 14:00 to 15:30.

The session will be led by Maria Pregnolato and Luke Prendergast.

The programme of this special session will include:

The impact of flooding and scour on infrastructure has severe economic and societal consequences worldwide. Flooding-related losses are projected to increase due to climate change, urbanisation and the increase of urban complexity. Furthermore, estimating the impact and assessing the nature of these events is becoming more uncertain due to these issues. Transport networks not only underpin economic activity by enabling the movement of goods and people, but guarantee emergency operations (e.g. rescue and evacuation) during extreme weather events. Specific assets, such as riverine bridges, are exposed to hydrodynamic effects, aging and the change of demand (e.g. modern cars and trucks), therefore are now at potentially higher risks of failure. This is compounded by the significant portion of infrastructure that is approaching the end of its design lives, putting increasing stress on already limited maintenance budgets. This prompts infrastructure owners and operators, emergency responders, academics, and industrial professionals to collaborate and work together to improve scour assessment of critical infrastructure for current and future scenarios.

This special session aims to bring together experts across the spectrum of infrastructure maintenance management, resilience, and flood modelling fields to assess the state-of-the-art, share knowledge, identify research gaps, and provide suggestion for future research directions in the area of infrastructure resilience to flooding. The session welcomes discussion contributions related to:

• Implication of flooding to infrastructure, bridges and wider transport networks;
• Current risk management practice of bridges in flood-prone areas;
• Impact of scour, debris and hydrodynamic forces on bridges;
• Structural Health Monitoring for improved management of bridges and infrastructure;
• Sensors, AI and smart sensing for bridges and infrastructure.
• Network-wide approaches to scour resilience
• Emergency management of scour-related collapses

Please use the 'add to Schedule' button on the Special Session Programme, to register your interest in participating in this special session.

For more information visit the Special Session Hub. To access this page, you will need to be registered online. If you haven't done so yet, please Register Now Here.