The Coquihalla highway was severely damaged after an historic atmospheric river in November 2021. UBCO engineers have created a bridge screening index to help decision-makers prioritize bridge inspection and maintenance schedules. Photo courtesy of BC Ministry of Transportation and Transit.
The combination of extreme weather conditions, like atmospheric rivers, and aging infrastructure is putting increasing pressures on Canadian highways, bridges and tunnels-many of which are almost 100 years old.
UBC Okanagan researchers caution that these systems are facing hazards they weren't considered in their original design, and this increases their vulnerability to failure. This growing strain is putting significant pressure on local governments, which must secure funding to upgrade and maintain these critical transportation networks, says UBC Okanagan School of Engineering postdoctoral researcher Dr. Alaa Al Hawarneh.
He is the lead author of a recently published paper in Automation in Construction that gives crews guidelines for spotting wear or climate-related damage on bridges and roads. The study also introduces a data-driven decision-support framework that helps agencies systematically prioritize infrastructure interventions under limited budgets.
"Engineers today are increasingly concerned about extreme climate-driven hazards," says Dr. Al Hawarneh, who works with UBCO's Applied Lab for Advanced Materials. "Climate change is steadily raising average temperatures and sea levels, which in turn intensifies hydrological processes such as extreme rainfall, flooding and severe storms."
He points to the November 2021 atmospheric river, which caused bridges to collapse, highways to washout and major routes to close-cutting off BC's lower mainland from the rest of Canada.
While climate change is part of the problem, Dr. Al Hawarneh notes that Canada's aging infrastructure compounds the issue because many structures are approaching or exceeding their intended lifespan.
"More than 40 per cent of highway bridges in Canada and nearly half the tunnels owned by rural municipalities were constructed before 1940, meaning they were not designed for current traffic demands or evolving climate conditions. Half of these structures are rated between very poor and fair condition."
Dr. Al Hawarneh also says many governments have limited funding for maintenance and repairs, and the estimated cost across Canada could reach hundreds of billions of dollars.
Most deterioration occurs gradually through corrosion, fatigue or repeated use, and regular inspections usually catch problems long before they pose a safety concern. However, because resources are limited, transportation agencies must determine which bridges should be repaired first, balancing cost with safety, performance and wider socio-economic impacts.
"Our approach helps agencies screen and rank bridges efficiently without detailed structural analyses, which are often costly and impractical during the early stages of infrastructure planning. Instead, the framework relies on readily available inspection and operational data to support rapid and informed decision-making."
He notes that while all provinces have regular highway and bridge inspection schedules, supported by manuals and regulations, this research adds a broader framework that also weighs traffic demand, economic impact and community disruption to help prioritize repairs.
"Our research contributes to the next step of the process. Inspection manuals tell engineers the condition of each bridge, but governments must still decide which bridges should be repaired first when budgets are limited," explains Dr. Al Hawarneh. "Our research helps them make transparent, data-informed decisions to prioritize inspections and repairs."
The team developed a bridge screening index using structural, operational and community factors, such as daily traffic, detour time and length, accident risk and the potential economic or social impacts of disruption. They combined these factors into a simplified mathematical expression with weighted indicators, allowing each bridge to be assigned a single score that reflects its overall priority for maintenance or rehabilitation.
Using a ranking system, the team found that not all evaluation criteria contribute equally to maintenance decisions. Out of 21 potential indicators, they identified 11 factors as truly significant for prioritizing bridges. Structural condition emerged as the most influential parameter, followed by user-related impacts such as delay cost, fuel consumption and the cost of potential detour-related accidents.
This means that decisions are not based on engineering conditions alone, but also on how bridge deterioration affects the public and the economy.
A total of 10,000 simulations were conducted across seven scenarios to test different "what-if" situations to show how changing priorities can affect which bridges are ranked most critical. This helps decision-makers see how sensitive the results are to different policy choices, explains Dr. Shahria Alam, Director of UBC Okanagan's Green Construction Research and Training Centre.
"Overall, the research advances bridge management practices by introducing a robust and scalable decision-support tool," says Dr. Alam. "While it has its limits-such as dataset size and the exclusion of time-dependent deterioration-it provides a strong foundation for future enhancements, including the integration of larger datasets into the model and the use of emerging tools like artificial intelligence to better prioritize infrastructure."
