Page 363 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

A railway culvert maintenance management approach based on risk assessment techniques

economic and social impact linked to each failure mechanism. The nature of these mechanisms
leads to consider that these events are independent so the total risk will be the sum of all the
risks evaluated for the same asset.
3. Preliminary results and potential implementation

This section shows the main conclusions drawn from the application of the risk assessment me-
thodology to a set of 757 culverts located in different roadways the province of Ciudad Real,
Spain. The set includes different types of culvert barrels, different materials and deterioration
conditions. Additionally, the sample covers a considerably wide geographical area so that from
the point of view of the topography and the characteristics of the watersheds it is considered
sufficiently representative.
An important aspect to consider is that although the results shown below correspond roadways,
it has been considered that these results show the potential of the methodology to be applied
to different kind of linear infrastructures and its versatility since the changes to be made in the
assessment of probabilities and consequences in order to consider the level of risk in railway
culverts is minimal.
This analysis has been held in different communication routes (motorways, national highways
and autonomic roads) with different traffic intensities in order to fully cover the spectrum of
potential socio-economic impact. A number of peculiarities have been recognized to be taken
into account during the diagnostic process listed below:
• Evaluation of the hydraulic capacity of groups of culverts connected in series

• Evaluation of the hydraulic capacity of groups of culverts connected in parallel.
• Evaluation and particular recognition of culverts in extensions of roadway, recognizing di-
fferent typologies and materials in the same culvert barrel in several of them.

Figure 3. Location of the inspected culverts, Ciudad Real (Spain)

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 361