Invited perspectives: Challenges and future directions in improving bridge flood resilience

Tubaldi, Enrico; White, Christopher J.; Patelli, Edoardo; Mitoulis, Stergios Aristoteles; de Almeida, Gustavo; Brown, Jim; Cranston, Michael; Hardman, Martin; Koursari, Eftychia; Lamb, Rob; McDonald, Hazel; Mathews, Richard; Newell, Richard; Pizarro, Alonso; Roca, Marta; Zonta, Daniele

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-795-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-795-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-795-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

Invited perspectives

|

10 Mar 2022

Invited perspectives |

| 10 Mar 2022

Invited perspectives: Challenges and future directions in improving bridge flood resilience

Enrico Tubaldi, Christopher J. White, Edoardo Patelli, Stergios Aristoteles Mitoulis, Gustavo de Almeida, Jim Brown, Michael Cranston, Martin Hardman, Eftychia Koursari, Rob Lamb, Hazel McDonald, Richard Mathews, Richard Newell, Alonso Pizarro, Marta Roca, and Daniele Zonta

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Final revised paper (published on 10 Mar 2022)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Oct 2021)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

CC1: 'Comment on nhess-2021-293', Stergios Mitoulis, 25 Oct 2021

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Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-CC1
RC1:
'Comment on nhess-2021-293', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Nov 2021

Challenges and directions of future research in bridge flood resilience are discussed in this perspective article, based on the results of a workshop and a survey organised by the University of Strathclyde with experts from different fields. The article is timely, well-written and deserves publication. I have a few comments and suggestions for improvement:

- Please highlight the innovation of the paper against the state-of the art. If this is an agenda-setting paper, please comment on the timescales and mechanisms needed for solving these issues/problems. Why do the authors believe these challenges still exist? Perhaps a table explaining the causes and suggested solutions would be useful. This could include technical (engineering) but also other factors (accessibility, lack in methods, financial (resources), organisational, governance etc) to improve the significance of this paper.

- It is suggested to discuss the challenges and knowledge gaps in the definition of sufficient risk and resilience metrics for flood critical bridges. Also, discuss the challenges in the communication of risk and resilience assessments to the stakeholders and decision makers.

- It is suggested to illustrate the impact of uncertainties on the hazard, vulnerability and restoration models, in the resilience assessment of flood critical assets. For example, show qualitatively how these uncertainties can change the resilience curve.

- Figure 5: please improve the figure, also explain the symbols Vs, Vm, D, A, Q

- Please check the citations, eg, line 244-245 should be Argyroudis and Mitoulis (2021) instead of Argyroudis et al (2021)

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Enrico Tubaldi, 17 Jan 2022
  
  The authors thank the Reviewer for his/her positive evaluation of the manuscript and for the comments, which helped to improve its clarity and quality. The answers to the Reviewers' comments are provided in the enclosed pdf file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-AC1
CC2:
'Comment on nhess-2021-293', Maria Pregnolato, 25 Nov 2021

The paper aims at exploring gaps around the robustness of bridges to the flood hazard on the basis of an expert workshop that took place in April 2021 with the participation of academics, consultants and decision makers operating in the United Kingdom. The topic is urgent and timely.
I understand that the paper sections are stated to be derived from a “workshop and subsequent meetings”. However, the “workshop dimension” cannot be seen in the paper. For example, I was expecting to be told how the workshop was run and which information was sought (and how), how the participants were chosen and which expertise they were bringing to the table. The obvious reference here is Lamb et al. (2017) (https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/17/1393/2017/nhess-17-1393-2017.pdf)/ . The paper reads more as an interesting review, since it does miss to link the outputs, techniques and discussion of the workshop to what is presented in the paper. It is not evidenced how Table 1 was obtained through the workshop and co-working, to give another example. Perhaps, it is worth to consider re-framing the paper within a “review” structure/perspective – or to report how to workshop was structured and how the paper’s information was obtained. Finally, the paper would have benefitted by discussing topics that were left out of the workshop (and could act as “future research”), such as netzero.
Minor comments below.
L47: “to be of the order of 160,000 in total with the Highways Agency …” may need rephrasing
L47-50: what about all the other (non HA- or NR-owned) bridges?
L64: used “£” for pounds before
L66: “this” what?
L75: “the” Univ of Strathclyde (and also “the” for Surrey’s and Southampton’s)
L133: used “and” instead of & before and after
L13: used “formulae” instead of formulas before
L144, 243, 344, 431, 482, 493: “this” what?
L318: authors may want to refer to the updated version of BD97/12
L460-3: how can “Satellite imagery, aerial photography and UAVs technology (Figure 5) can also be very useful…”?
L487-489: I think Digital twins are just an example of technology for this paper, rather than a conclusion of it (since there is no evidence before leading to it in this section).
Table 1: what about the lack of flood damage models/curves for bridges at risk of flooding. What about resilience or restoration models? If these topics did not come out during the workshop, perhaps discuss anything that was left out during the event but worth to be mentioned? Also, maybe “data integration” rather than fusion?

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-CC2
- AC2: 'Reply on CC2', Enrico Tubaldi, 17 Jan 2022
  
  The authors thank Dr. Maria Pregnolato for the comments, which helped to improve its clarity and quality. The answers to the comments are provided in the enclosed pdf file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-AC2
RC2:
'Comment on nhess-2021-293', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Dec 2021
This paper examines the factor affecting bridge resilience and illustrates through literature research and the output of a recent workshop with major stakeholders in the sector possible actions to take based on the points individuated.

The paper is a welcome contribution given the importance of the infrastructure on the built environment and the future predicted impact of climate change, and present several important challenges and future opportunities.

While the work is very comprehensive, there could be a few additional points of reflection that could be included:

In general, the text could be accompanied by more results from the literature, in particular of these could help highlight the elements of uncertainty.

Line 135: One of the main factors of uncertainty in the scouring equation could be discussed further, examples include the definition of critical velocity (see Hamidifar et al 2021)

Line 150: I would highlight also the first works by Oliveto and Hager 2002 and 2005, on temporal scour evolution

175 -180 I would show some of the possible morphologies individuated from literature, which would help illustrate the point on important differences.

210 Scouring on deck by Carnacina et al with debris accumulation also illustrate the potential increased scouring as well as flow acceleration (Carnacina et al. 2019 )

220 Would be nice to have a comparison of various literature fragility curves, again as an illustration of the vast uncertainty existing around their determination also in line 265

Line 410 the reference to Bayesian Networks is not fully clear? It seems an important challenge but the expected outcome could be extended further, how this could merge the data?

Other general comments include:

Plots with the cause of failure of bridges as a percentage of mechanism, given the breadth of the stakeholders this statistic would be very welcomed

In the table and based on a high-level cost/opportunity analysis, which action should be taken first or prioritized, together with a desired temporal framework.

Protections are generally overlocked, but several older bridges have been protected with rip-raps gabions, block ramps or similar structures.

I can’t find Cantero-Chinchilla and de Almeida, 2021 in the list of references, which should illustrate the literature on debris impact on scouring. Other references on the topic exist that show the impact of debris accumulation on scouring, the impact on scouring protection that highlight important results on scouring temporal evolutions and morphologies (see for example the early work by Melville and Dongol 1992 but also Lagasse et al 2006, Pagliara and Carnacina 2010, Carnacina et al 2019)

REFERENCES

Hamidifar H, Zanganeh-Inaloo F, Carnacina I. 2021. Hybrid scour depth prediction equations for reliable design of bridge piers Water, 13

Oliveto, G., Hager, W.H. (2002). Temporal evolution of clear-water pier and abutment scour. J. Hydraul. Eng. 128(9), 811–820.

Oliveto, G., Hager, W.H. (2005). Further results to time dependent local scour at bridge elements. J. Hydraul. Eng. 131(2), 97–105.

Melville, B.W., Dongol, D.M. (1992). Bridge pier scour with debris accumulation. J. Hydraul. Eng. 118(9), 1306–1310.

Zevenbergen, L.W., Lagasse, P.F., Clopper, P.E., Spitz, W.J. (2006). Effects of debris on bridge pier scour. 3rd Intl. Conf. Scour Erosion, Amsterdam, NL, (CD-ROM).

Pagliara S, Carnacina I. 2013. Bridge pier flow field in the presence of debris accumulation PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS-WATER MANAGEMENT, 166 :187-198

Carnacina I, Pagliara S, Leonardi N. 2019. Bridge pier scour under pressure flow conditions River Research and Applications,

Pagliara S, Carnacina I. 2010. Temporal scour evolution at bridge piers: effect of wood debris roughness and porosity JOURNAL OF HYDRAULIC RESEARCH, 48 :3-13
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-RC2
- AC3: 'Reply on RC2', Enrico Tubaldi, 17 Jan 2022
  
  The authors thank the Reviewer for his/her positive evaluation of the manuscript and for the comments, which helped to improve its clarity and quality. The answers to the Reviewers' comments are provided in the enclosed pdf file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-293-AC3

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Jan 2022) by Kai Schröter

Dear Enrico Tubaldie and co-authors,

thank you very much again for submitting your invited perspective on 'Challenges and future directions in improving bridge flood resilience' to NHESS and for your responses to the comments of the referees.

The referees agree that the manuscript is of interest to the readers of NHESS and the flood risk community. Combining the reports it appears that some minor edits are suggested to increase the clarity and comprehensiveness of your paper.

Your responses seem to take up the constructive comments of the referees. Therefore, I decided on minor revisions.
In addition to the points raised by the referees and your responses I kindly ask you to take these points into consideration:
i) How do you intend to include the additional information about the workshop procedure in the manuscript?
ii) please introduce a definition of how you use the term 'data fusion' in your paper. A number of definitions are around and referring to Wikipedia is not the best choice in a scientific paper. Instead, you may look into:
L. Wald, "Some terms of reference in data fusion," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 1190-1193, May 1999, doi: 10.1109/36.763269.

Please follow the guidelines of NHESS to prepare and submit your revision (as .pdf) including (1) comments from referees/public, (2) author's response to each comment one by one, and (3) author's changes in manuscript. Regarding the author's changes, a marked-up manuscript version (track changes in Word, latexdiff in LaTeX) converted into a *.pdf. Additionally, you have to upload the new version of the manuscript.

If you have any questions regarding the procedure or interpretation of the comments, please do not hesitate to contact me for clarification.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript for review by the editor only.

Kind regards,
Kai Schröter

NHESS Editor

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AR by Enrico Tubaldi on behalf of the Authors (23 Jan 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (26 Jan 2022) by Kai Schröter

AR by Enrico Tubaldi on behalf of the Authors (04 Feb 2022) Manuscript

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Short summary

Bridges are critical infrastructure components of transport networks. A large number of these critical assets cross or are adjacent to waterways and are therefore exposed to the potentially devastating impact of floods. This paper discusses a series of issues and areas where improvements in research and practice are required in the context of risk assessment and management of bridges exposed to flood hazard, with the ultimate goal of guiding future efforts in improving bridge flood resilience.