ABSTRACT
For the appropriate decision-making on maintenance and safety of existing infrastructure, obtaining accurate monitoring information is of crucial importance. Both at a European and national level, current standards and monitoring practice lack standardized approaches to monitoring and this could be partially attributed to the high diversity of the transport infrastructure assets and their environments that increases the complexity of this matter. The new fib Model Code 2020 (MC2020) paves the way to new European standards for monitoring and maintenance of structures. Furthermore, MC2020 aims to improve the rules in the structural design codes by bridging the gaps in the current knowledge in theory and practice regarding the monitoring of structures. The main objectives of MC2020 should facilitate and support the various standardization bodies to prepare new standards in monitoring, maintenance, and safety of transport infrastructure. In addition to MC2020, the EU Horizon 2020 IM-SAFE project suggests a respective methodology that tries to be in line with classical engineering procedures, presented in the form of a flow chart. Based on these multi-level condition assessment processes, which are briefly presented in the current paper, an Austrian bridge is used as a case study. The Seitenhafenbridge in Vienna has been monitored over the past 10 years and the acquired data with respect to the condition assessment of the bridge are used for the implementation of the IM-SAFE flow chart aiming to increase the service life for the structure.
