Milan, November 4 (askanews) – Cracks, corroded iron, abnormal oscillations, and falling debris are the most obvious warning signs for road and rail infrastructure. But a serious and invisible threat is also linked to climate change. This is what emerges from a report by Nexta, an engineering firm of the Bureau Veritas group in Italy, which provides innovative safety recommendations for inspections and controls.
These cannot be limited to identifying defects; it is also necessary to verify whether the conditions for which the works were designed have changed. An infrastructure may maintain an apparently intact appearance, yet find itself operating in an environment different from that originally envisaged. Each infrastructure is designed based on specific environmental, hydrological, geological, and geotechnical conditions.
Over the life of a project, however, these parameters may change. Rising temperatures, alternating periods of drought and heavy rainfall, varying flood patterns, and slope instability dramatically alter the framework and the stresses to which infrastructure is subjected. These are aspects that the climate crisis makes increasingly relevant.
Italy's infrastructure network comprises approximately 600.000 kilometers of roads, over 16.000 kilometers of railway lines, approximately 240.000 registered bridges and viaducts, and 3.500 tunnels. Sixty to seventy percent of these structures were built more than 30 years ago, based on different climatic, hydrological, and geographical conditions than today. According to ISPRA, in 2023, 18,4% of the national territory was at risk of landslides and 4,1% at risk of flooding in the highest risk scenario. This scenario is now also being impacted by Italy's increasingly variable climate, which confirms a rapid increase in temperatures and a reduction in rainfall, with a significant increase in the intensity of individual events. This is the context in which Nexta operates, having been involved for years in the assessment, monitoring, and management of infrastructure and the territory. Thanks to a group of professionals with multidisciplinary expertise, Nexta addresses these issues by integrating structural, hydraulic, geotechnical, environmental, and risk management engineering. A coordinated approach, according to Bureau Veritas, is essential to understand not only the status of a structure, but also the evolving conditions under which it exists, and to identify appropriate prevention and adaptation solutions.
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