The management of national road networks in Europe over the coming 20-30 years will be governed by a number of external factors such as the predicted performance of the asset, the projected traffic forecasts, the potential impact of climate change and the effects of limited spending on infrastructure.

 

Ageing, aggressive environmental conditions and natural hazards are some of the causes for the progressive degradation of infrastructures over their lifetime. In addition to these, the increase in traffic levels over time leads to increased structural performance demands. Even the inherently conservative initial design of structural systems may not protect a structure from these threats. The effect of structural ageing is perhaps most widely apparent in road infrastructures deterioration, exacerbated by an increase in traffic over time and as demonstrated in recent research by the effects of climate change which increase carbonation and corrosion rates. In this context, stakeholders require decision-support tools to allocate funds for assessment and maintenance of bridges in an optimal way under financial constraints.

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The primary objective of Re-Gen is to provide Road Owners/Managers with best practice tools and methodologies for risk assessment of critical infrastructure elements such as bridges, retaining structures and steep embankments. The Re-Gen project seeks to adopt a network-wide probabilistic risk based approach to optimise lifecycle performance of the infrastructure, within the context of evolving traffic demands and climate change effects. The proposed framework will consider the different types of risk faced by national road administrations such as safety risk, financial risk, operational risk, commercial risk and reputational risk

The project consortium consist of six partners, two SMEs, one large enterprise and three  leading European research institutes, each with particular expertise and complementary skills key to the success of the project.