Practical and simplified approach for quantifying bridge resilience

Even though the concept of resilience has been around since the 1970s, it has recently become a critical part of discussions among transportation stakeholders and planners after natural disasters took a toll on U.S. infrastructure, including bridges, and left many stranded without basic infrastructure services or access to emergency facilities. This paper expands on previous research on transportation asset resilience and proposes a practical and simplified multistage framework to analyze and assess bridge resilience. Even though the proposed framework is qualitative, it directly addresses some of the key aspects of bridge operation and captures expert knowledge and lessons learned from the previous extreme events through a series of case studies. Two case studies are presented for bridges that were affected during Hurricane Katrina to exemplify the potential value of this approach in evaluating the resilience of bridges utilizing the existing bridge inventory data. The paper concludes with observations, comments, and suggestions for the next steps in improving the framework.