Maria Pregnolato

• PhD in Civil Engineering
• Professor (Associate) at Delft University of Technology

Despite ongoing investments in disaster resilience, flooding continues to disrupt healthcare systems directly and indirectly through transportation network failures. Existing models used for mitigation planning from such disruptions often miss critical dynamics, particularly traffic rerouting, especially at the regional and national scales needed f...

Hydraulic actions resulting in scour are a major cause of bridge failures worldwide. The development of scour is affected by various factors including structural geometry, river morphology and weather conditions. Detection of scour is often carried out using visual inspection-based methods. Visual inspection requires the expertise of divers which i...

Visual inspection remains an essential tool for assessing structural damage. Damage detection is a challenging task for those specifying, designing, and deploying SHM systems. Often only traditional visual inspection processes are available to determine the type and extent of structural damage. For bridge structures in the UK, a regime of general (...

Digitalisation and the Internet of Things (IoT) help city councils improve services, increase productivity and reduce costs. City‐scale monitoring of traffic and pollution enables the development of insights into low‐air quality areas and the introduction of improvements. IoT provides a platform for the intelligent interconnection of everyday objec...

Bridges are essential elements in the built environment since they underpin the functioning of transportation systems. Nevertheless, they are vulnerable due to aggressive environment, demand beyond the design level, and other contingencies such as extreme events. The management of bridges represents a significant challenge for improving transport p...

Frequency and intensity of hydrological hazards have increased. Consequently, riverine bridges are suffering damage due to flooding. Fragility functions are used to estimate such damage conditioned on hazard intensity. However, flood fragility functions are limited for riverine bridges, and generally lack for masonry bridges. This paper presents a...

Bridges are important lifelines linking communities and their collapse due to flood events can result in severe social and economic impacts for communities. Estimation of maximum bridge scour depth is important for determining effective mitigation and adaptation procedures. HEC-18 is a well-established methodology to calculate scour depth. However,...

Scour is a complex phenomenon and one of the most frequent causes of riverine bridge failures. Detecting scouring effects is a complex geotechnical/structural/hydraulic engineering challenge. Incorporating more risk-based approaches into scour assessment frameworks may allow for enhancements over current processes which remain reliant on visual ins...

The visual inspection of bridges is a major undertaking for asset owners and operators. In the UK, visual inspections require inspectors to visit bridges on-site and often at night and in unfavourable weather conditions. Therefore, it would be beneficial to move some of the visual inspection process off-site. This paper studies whether the defect c...

A-priori estimates of maximum scour depth are important for bridge engineers, managers and owners. HEC-18 is an established method which uses empirical equations to estimate bridge scour. This paper applies the HEC-18 methodology to compute maximum scour depth for 936 bridge piers for which field scour depth measurements are available from an onlin...

On-site sanitation systems (OSS), such as pit latrines, are an important source of methane (CH4), with emissions increasing when they are wet, and this occurs when anaerobic conditions dominate. This paper presents the development of a model, which uses seasonal changes in groundwater to account for the fluctuating inundation of pit latrines, and,...

Housing in informal settlements often lacks construction techniques that adopt criteria of resilience to natural hazards. Smartphones are rapidly diffusing in economically developing countries. The aim of this study was to assess the current use of smartphones by the masons of the informal settlements of Iringa, Tanzania, and to identify pathways f...

Scour is a significant cause of bridge failure, and resulting bridge closures are likely to generate significant disruption to infrastructure networks. The management of scour-susceptible bridges is a significant challenge for improving transport resilience, but tends to be heuristic and qualitative. Such assessments often suffer from insufficient...

Visual inspection remains key for assessing the condition of bridges and hence assisting with planning and maintenance activities. There have been many efforts to improve or supplement visual inspection processes using new sensing technologies and data capture methods to usher in an era of ‘smart bridges’ or ‘smart infrastructure’. One method to im...

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a blueprint for global peace and prosperity, while conserving natural ecosystems and resources for the planet. However, factors such as climate-induced weather extremes and other High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) events on their own can devastate lives and livelihoods. When a pandemic affects us,...

Freshwater species and their habitats, and transportation networks are at heightened risk from changing climate and are priorities for adaptation, with the sheer abundance and individuality of road-river structures complicating mitigation efforts. We present a new spatial dataset of road-river structures attributed as culverts, bridges, or fords, a...

Advances in computational technology have led to a revolutionary innovation in civil infrastructure design, construction, and operation in the last decade. The capability of real-time modelling and synchronisation is seen as crucial for a safer and resilient society considering infrastructure is aging and subjected to increasing loads (e.g. higher...

Digital Twins (DTs) are forecasted to be used in two-thirds of large industrial companies in the next decade. In the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector, their actual application is still largely at the prototype stage. Industry and academia are currently reconciling many competing definitions and unclear processes for developin...

Hydrological hazards (“hydro-hazards”) are defined as extreme events associated with the occurrence, movement and distribution of water, specifically resulting in floods and droughts. As a result of global climate change these hazards are expected to change in the future, with areas of the globe becoming “hotspots” for the intensification of these...

The changing climate with resulting more extreme weather events will likely impact infrastructure assets and services. This phenomenon can present direct threats to the assets as well as significant indirect effects for those relying on the services those assets deliver. Such threats are path-dependent and place-specific, as they strongly depend on...

An approach for assessing the value of a structural health monitoring (SHM) system for a bridge prior to deployment has been developed. The methodology systematically obtains the views of three key stakeholders in bridge SHM management: the asset owner, the structural engineer and the SHM engineer. The output of the methodology is a numerical value...

Bridges are important infrastructure assets that are vital for the connectivity of communities. Visual inspections remain a key method for bridge condition monitoring. However, visual inspections are often considered to be highly subjective and therefore alternative technologies are often proposed as a means of replacing or enhancing current visual...

Bridge scour is a major cause of bridge collapse worldwide. Various approaches are available to estimate levels of scouring due to hydraulic loading. Such scour depth assessment methodologies typically employ a series of empirical and semi-empirical equations to estimate scour around a bridge element. This work examines three such methodologies, na...

Infrastructure (including bridges, viaducts and embankments) built in or near rivers, estuaries or coastal regions are vulnerable to scour. Scour undermining of piers or abutments during floods is the most common cause of bridge failure, and can result in loss to life, disruption to transport and economic losses. The factors influencing development...

This paper compares the application of two recently published guidance documents for risk-based assessment of hydraulic actions on bridges, namely the UK Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (CS 469, 2021) and the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport Guidelines (2020). The guidelines in each document are applied to two case study bridges...

Flood events are the most frequent cause of damage to infrastructure compared to any other natural hazard, and global changes (climate, socioeconomic, technological) are likely to increase this damage. Transportation infrastructure systems are responsible for moving people, goods and services, and ensuring connection within and among urban areas. A...

Understanding the resilience of water supplies to climate change is becoming an urgent priority to ensure health targets are met. Addressing systemic issues and building the resilience of community-managed supplies, which serve millions of people in rural LMIC settings, will be critical to improve access to safe drinking water. The How Tough is WAS...

Many communities around the world are facing increasing flood-induced damages to bridges due to climate change and rising urbanization. It is crucial to understand how different bridge types suffer from flooding and how this may affect the surrounding network. Despite the large body of literature for seismic and hurricane taxonomies, a few classifi...

Bridge scour is a complex bridge-management problem. It is also a difficult forensic engineering challenge, as the greatest risk occurs during large flows and flood events, when visual inspection of the bridge piers is often not possible. This paper presents a review of scour prediction and modelling methods, whose results are used to determine the...

Accurate spatial distribution information of rainfall is essential to rainfall‐induced hazard predictions and statistical interpolation methods may serve as a useful tool to produce a detailed distribution from coarse data sources. Although numerous comparison studies about different interpolation methods have been conducted on irregular rain‐gauge...

Floods are one of the most frequent and damaging natural threats worldwide. Whereas the assessment of direct impacts is well advanced, the evaluation of indirect impacts is less frequently achieved. Indirect impacts are not due to the physical contact with flood water but result, for example, from the reduced performance of infrastructures. Linear...

Transportation systems are the lifeblood of countries and cities, supporting mobility for people, goods exchange, and businesses connectivity. The efficient and sustainable performance of these systems is crucial in all urban, rural, and in between spaces, not least for emergency management (e.g., evacuation, rescue, and recovery). Urban transporta...

Scour is a major cause of bridge failure and results in significant economic losses through disruption to operation. This phenomenon naturally affects bridges with underwater foundations and is exacerbated during high river and/or turbulent flows (e.g. due to extreme events). When scour reaches the bottom of or undermines shallow foundations, it ma...

According to UNISDR, floods are the most frequent and damaging natural threat worldwide. Whereas the assessment of direct losses is well advanced, the evaluation of indirect impacts is less frequently applied. Indirect impacts are not due to the physical contact with flood water but result from the reduced performance of infrastructures. Linear cri...

p>One major issue when considering the effects of climate change is to understand, qualify and quantify how natural hazards and the changing climate will likely impact infrastructure assets and services as it strongly depends on current and future climate variability, location, asset design life, function and condition. So far, there is no well-def...

Flood events are the most frequent cause of damage to infrastructure compared to any other natural hazard, and global changes (climate, socio-economic, technological) are likely to increase this damage. Transportation infrastructure systems are responsible for moving people, goods and services, and ensuring connection within and among urban areas....

Building water-wise cities is a pressing need nowadays in both developed and developing countries. This is mainly due to the limitation of the available water resources and aging infrastructure to meet the needs of adapting to social and environmental changes and for urban liveability. This is the first book to provide comprehensive insights into t...

Hydrological hazards, or ‘hydro-hazards’, are defined as “extreme events associated with the occurrence, movement and distribution of water, such as floods and droughts” (Visser-Quinn et al., 2019). Singular or interacting physical process which drive hydro-hazards can combine to produce a range of compounding and cascading impacts, which may inter...

In the last two decades, probabilistic approaches to flood risk modeling have emerged, often as an extension of more consolidated methods used in probabilistic seismic risk assessment. Nonetheless, only a few studies deal with best-practice methodologies for flood physical vulnerability assessment, and existing approaches/models often lack appropri...

Floods are the most frequent and damaging natural threat worldwide. Whereas the assessment of direct impacts is well advanced, the evaluation of indirect impacts is less frequently achieved. Indirect impacts are not due to the physical contact with flood water but result from the reduced performance of infrastructures. Linear critical infrastructur...

Bridges facilitate riverine connectivity by enabling movement of people, ideas, cultures, as well as goods and utilities over rivers. Here, we focus on river-bridges, specifically those associated with transport such as road and rail networks. While river-bridges facilitate human movement and connectivity, these structures are also vulnerable to ch...

Cities are increasingly vulnerable to damage and disruption from adverse weather events, due to their high concentration of people and assets and a changing climate. In the United Kingdom, the winter storms of 2010 cost the economy £280 million per day, and the government is set to invest £300 billion to protect infrastructure assets at risk from f...

Bridges are crucial points of connection in the transport system, underpinning economic vitality, social well-being and logistics of modern communities. Bridges have also strategic relevance, since they support access to emergency services (e.g. hospitals) and utilities (e.g. water supplies). Bridges are mostly exposed to natural hazards, in partic...

Transportation infrastructure is a pylon for the society and economy, enabling the services and transportation of goods and people, under normal and emergency circumstances. Bridges act as bottlenecks within road and rail networks, since bridges are crunch points along the network system. Their failures due to multiple natural hazards (e.g. floods,...

Bridge are crucial points of connection in the transport system, underpinning economic vitality, social well-being and logistics of modern communities. Bridges have especial social and economic importance, since they support access to emergency services (e.g. hospitals) and utilities (e.g. water supply). Bridges are mostly exposed to natural hazard...

Cities are increasingly vulnerable to damage and disruption from adverse-weather events, due to their high concentration of people and assets (IPCC, 2012). Improved engineering and decision-making requires novel analytical tools and methodologies considering the complex interactions between climate hazards, infrastructure, and actors within the urb...

Civil responders currently have limited information available to them to support flood incident planning. A new generation of tools are emerging that produce more detailed understanding of flood impacts on people and accessibility during floods. These are typically applied in isolation, proving only a partial assessment of impacts. This paper integ...

This work investigates the integration between a detailed hydraulic model and transport models to create risk maps for pedestrians and drivers. These maps support Civil Protection operations and training, and ultimately improving flood preparedness.

This study investigated the impact of fluvial flooding on bridge performance. A high-resoluted flood model is coupled with damage and transport modelling, to assess structural vulnerability and critical functionality of bridges subjected to flooding.

Climate change, extreme weather and flooding threaten to increase damage and disruption to our transport networks and the services that they provide. There is increased need for adaptation to maintain current asset conditions and services, and a strategic requirement to prioritise such investments in adaptation to reduce future risks. Physical netw...

Short-duration, high-intensity rainfall causes significant disruption to transport operations, and climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of these events. Disruption costs of flooding are currently calculated using crude approaches. To support improved business cases for adapting urban infrastructure to climate change,...

Sea-level rise is a likely consequence of changes in climate patterns in the future. Flood defences represent a conventional means to protect coastal cities and will have an increasing key role in adapting to the threat of sea-level rise. Failure to consider the costs of adaptation strategies can be seen by decision makers as a barrier to implement...

http://isngi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Maria-Pregnolato.pdf

Transport networks underpin economic activity by enabling the movement of goods and people. During extreme weather events transport infrastructure can be directly or indirectly damaged, posing a threat to human safety, and causing significant disruption and associated economic and social impacts. Flooding, especially as a result of intense precipit...

Prezi presentation (40’) Seminar for the Water and Geomatics research groups

Infrastructure provision at a fine spatial intra-urban scale is fundamental for the development of local energy generation models, new approaches to localized water supply and waste management. For that, information is required at the building/household level. This paper presents a preliminary model of building stock and household composition, deri...

Prezi presentation available at http://prezi.com/7q1rxdorz2tz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Critical infrastructure networks, including transport, are crucial to the social and economic function of urban areas but are at increasing risk from natural hazards. Minimizing disruption to these networks should form part of a strategy to increase urban resilience. A framework for assessing the disruption from flood events to transport systems is...

Transport infrastructure networks are increasingly vulnerable to disruption from extreme rainfall events due to increasing surface water runoff from urbanization and changes in climate. Impacts from such disruptions typically extend far beyond the flood footprint, because of the interconnection and spatial extent of modern infrastructure. An integr...

Transport infrastructure networks are increasingly vulnerable to disruption from extreme rainfall events due to increasing surface water runoff from urbanization and changes in climate. The impacts of such disruptions typically extend far beyond the original disaster footprint, because of the increased interconnection and spatial extent of modern i...

In the last decade, probabilistic approaches for flood risk assessment have emerged, often as an extension of more consolidated methods used in probabilistic seismic risk assessment. Nonetheless, only a few studies deal with best-practice methodologies for flood vulnerability assessment and existing approaches lack of an appropriate guidance for th...

National-scale climate projections indicate that in the future there will be hotter and drier summers, warmer and wetter winters, together with rising sea levels. The frequency of extreme weather events is expected to increase, causing severe damage to the built environment and disruption of infrastructures (Dawson, 2007), whilst population growth...

Existing approaches to delivering infrastructure are repeatedly criticised for returning poor value for money to the taxpayer and being too narrow to capture the wide range of benefits infrastructure provides to the economy, society and environment. Austerity provides a further stimulus to innovate new ways of delivering, funding, valuing and manag...

Cities face risks from climate change, placing increased pressure on infrastructure extremes. A methodology to assess the impacts of extreme weather events on urban networks has been developed, using a catastrophe modelling approach to risk assessment by overlaying spatial data, applying hazard thresholds, and testing potential adaptations. Utilisi...