Sustainable bridges

One of the hottest topics discussed in the international engineering community at present is global warming and climate change. Global warming and climate change would result in frequent extreme events such as high intensity rain fall, severe storms, floods and droughts and sea level rise causing coastal line moving inland, reducing valuable land area and adversity affecting people’s living conditions. In most of the countries, some infrastructures such as bridges, highways, buildings, dams and other structures are approaching their end of design life. Also, the current infrastructure management practices are not geared to increase the sustainability of such infrastructure to an acceptable standards or to meet the demands of future sustainable infrastructure development. Therefore, strategies need to be developed for keeping existing infrastructure sustainable and building new sustainable infrastructures with minimum consumption of energy, reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and minimum impact on the environment. This can only be achieved through developing a life-cycle management plan that addresses sustainability issues at feasibility, planning and design, construction, operation, maintenance and decommission and/or removal stages