Landslide risk assessment of existing bridges: analysis of the Italian Guidelines and preliminary proposal for future developments

Many Italian bridges were built more than 50 years ago and are subjected to significant phenomena of deterioration. The current situation would require in-depth analyses to be carried out on all infrastructures to assess the current level of safety, according to in-force national standards, and to define appropriate construction or operational interventions. However, taking account of the large number of infrastructures, the necessity to define the priorities for detailed assessments arises and, this is why the recent Italian ‘Guidelines for risk classification and management, safety assessment and structural health monitoring of existing bridges’ include, for the first time in Italy, a stepwise approach with increasing level of detail. In this article, with reference to landslide risk assessment at the national scale, the main issues arisen from the analysis of the guidelines are discussed. This has been done based on the collaboration between researchers from geomorphological, geotechnical and structural engineering fields. Moreover, a preliminary proposal for a novel approach to rapid landslide risk assessment of existing bridges, is briefly proposed.