Resilience-based design for next-generation bridge design and construction

Resilience of infrastructure is characterised by its ability to quickly rebound to standard operation after a disrupting event. The bridges constructed using conventional techniques are not resilient to short-term threats (earthquakes, floods etc.) and deteriorate in the long-term. England’s strategic and local road networks have a net worth of £344 billion. Maintenance of concrete bridges is estimated to cost about £1 billion/year in England and Wales, which represents about 10% of the total UK bridge inventory. In the US, the estimated direct cost to repair ageing infrastructure is over $200 billion in total. The UK population is projected to reach 75 million and global population 9.5 billion by 2050, leading to significantly increased need for efficient use and maintenance of existing, and construction of new, transport infrastructure. Thus, the transport infrastructure constructed today need be in use for about 120 years, providing they are resilient, healthy, and productive over their life-cycle, and demountable and potentially recyclable at the end of their service life.This Special Issue of Structures contains a collection of papers, most of which were part of a workshop on “Resilience-Based Design for Next-Generation Bridge Design and Construction”. The workshop was planned to take place July 2020, but postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions, so the special issue is published ahead of the workshop. The workshop, and this special issue, is supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [grant number EP/R039178/1]: SPINE: Resilience-Based Design of Biologically Inspired Columns for Next-Generation Accelerated Bridge Construction.The papers represent the state-of-the-art in a number of areas of bridge engineering and include theoretical contributions, experimental investigations, the application of numerical methods, and studies into composite materials and accelerated construction.We would like to take this opportunity to thank the authors of the papers for their high-quality contributions to this special issue. We would also like to thank our reviewers for their valuable comments that helped improving the quality of manuscripts