Damage of bridges and local transport network, by Dr Marianna Loli
On September 17, 2020, the Mediterranean Cyclone (a.k.a. Medicane) “Ianos” made landfall in central Greece affecting a great part of the Country. In the most impacted areas, the associated precipitation was among the highest ever recorded. Numerous slope failures (landslides, rockfalls, debris flows) and extensive flooding took place as a consequence of the event. Road and railway networks were severely damaged due to erosion of the supporting embankments and debris built-up. Riverbanks and levees were overtopped or washed away, while particularly pronounced was the damage to bridges due to foundation scour.
Dr Marianna Loli (Marie Curie Research Fellow of the University of Surrey) took part in a multi-institutional field reconnaissance mobilized by the US GEER Association and led by Prof Dimitrios Zekkos of UC Berkeley, and Georgios Zalachoris of Elxis Group. Multiple field deployments took place in a coordinated effort and were facilitated by UAV mapping, remote sensing tools, geospatial data analysis, optical and radar satellite imagery, as well as data-mining of social-media news.
Marianna’s work focused on the Town of Mouzaki (central Greece) which was the hot spot of flood-induced failures. She inspected a total of 15 bridges with damage ranging from minor (slight movement) to complete collapse. A preliminary analysis of her on ground observations is included in the 5th Chapter of the Reconnaissance Report that was recently published by GEER.
This work is the first step of an ongoing investigation of scour effects on bridges that will be core to the verification of the risk assessment tools developed within the ReBounce project funded by H2020-MSCA-IF-Rebounce, hosted by University of Surrey. Selected case studies have been mapped in detail, employing UAV images, in collaboration with Elxis Group. Their detailed analysis will be presented in a Special Session that will take place in the forthcoming International Conference of Natural Hazards & Infrastructure (ICONHIC21).
