Bridge Design, Maintenance and Management. Guest Editorial

The number of deteriorating bridges is continuously increasing worldwide, with costs of maintenance, repair and rehabilitation greatly exceeding available budgets. A rational and modern approach to bridge management is therefore necessary to maintain or improve safety and serviceability of existing bridges by optimising the available resources under uncertainty and multiple conflicting objectives. The scientific community and bridge engineering profession are responding to this need with the development of advanced methodologies for bridge design and assessment and comprehensive bridge management systems. Following this trend, it was considered appropriate to bring together all of the very best work that has been done in the field of bridge design, maintenance and management at the Fifth International Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety and Management (IABMAS 2010), held in Philadelphia, PA, USA, from 11 July 2005 through 15 July 2010.The extended versions of eight selected papers presented at IABMAS 2010 are published in this special issue to provide a useful reference to advance research and applications in the field of bridge design, maintenance and management