Prescription of Maintenance Interventions by the New Generation of Eurocodes for Climate-Change Resilient Structures

Abstract

The new generation of structural Eurocodes will include climate change adaption measures in order to enhance the climate resilience of infrastructures across Europe. This paper discusses the impact that climate change might have on reinforced concrete structures subjected to corrosion, and the associated challenges of the standardisation of adaptation measures. A resilience-based framework is proposed for the adaptation of structural codes to climate change-induced actions. Such an approach aims to provide the required adaptive capacity to the new structures in order to be able to respond to the uncertain future minimising the investment under unlikely scenarios. In that way, the strategy can be summarised as a climate change-adapted design plus an in-design maintenance plan. Future actions, such as mapping the future climate-related drivers of corrosion, the determination of the design values of these drivers, and the prescription of maintenance activities, should be further investigated. Although this paper focuses on the new structures that will be designed with the new codes, some of the insights can be extrapolated to the existing structures.

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