Sustainability and digitalisation in bridge management: present and future

Sustainability and digitalisation are two main topics in many research programs in Europe and worldwide. It seems that bridge managers can largely benefit from the current digital transformation where processes using digital technologies are able to create new or to enhance existing bridge management systems (BMS). The concepts of sustainability and digitalisation are very different in essence. The former is a societal need, while the later is just a tool. Therefore, the correct approach for their fully adoption in the bridge management environment has to be also different in their basis, formulation and implementation. For an optimal adoption and development of both topics, also the actual trends in the bridge management policies, as performance-based decision making and adaptive BMS should be considered. This paper analyzes the actual bridge management policies, trying to evaluate their current level of sustainability and digitalisation and what are the future steps to follow to achieve an optimal situation. It is shown that although in the technical aspects the goals are not so far, the human factor (educational and organisational aspects) remains as the critical factor for a full and optimal implementation.