Abstract Summary
The asset management of infrastructure objects in the urban environment such as bridges and quay walls is a complex process. One of the key steps of this process is the assessment of structural safety which is based nowadays on performance requirements not known decades or centuries ago when bridges and quay walls where built. Furthermore, the traffic load models for bridge assessment given in the current standards are intrinsically conservative because they apply to bridges with a variety of static schemes, typologies and length. Aiming to improve the management of structural safety, municipalities started to collect data about traffic loads and intensities. However, these data need to be coupled to models to generate useful and reliable information for asset management of the infrastructure network. This paper presents the LoadMap, an interactive tool developed by TNO and implementing a methodology for the prediction of traffic loads and load effects in infrastructure objects of a transportation network. The LoadMap integrates of a variety of sources of data including Weigh-in-Motion data and vehicles counting by loop detectors, and models such as probabilistic models modelling the uncertainties of loads and load effects, freight flow models at the network level and structural models of the objects. As a result, the LoadMap enables the assessment of asset-specific probabilistic traffic load models, the extrapolation of the design loads and load effects for the assessment of structural safety and the evaluation of the impact of new policies on the loading conditions of the infrastructure objects through a network analysis.
