The state of damage on South American road bridges due to degradation and extreme events: a proposal for performance indicators

The pathologies and management of road bridge maintenance are associated with the traditional typologies, operational conditions and personal experiences of each country administration entities. Europe’s ongoing challenge to provide standardised performance and goal indicators for road bridges is a contribution to the state of the art in this matter. This enables other countries to have referential information for eventual implementation. Nowadays, in South America performance indicators and inspection maintenance programmes are not standardised. The present article presents the state of damage on South-American road bridges due to degradation and the most common extreme events in the region: earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis. Additionally, a technical assessment of the impact of these events in the design and management programmes due to their increased frequency is presented. Finally, the first novel set of specific performance indicators (buckling on uplift bars, damage on bearing support, among others) are provided for South American future implementations in the management programmes including the current European standard performance indicators.