# Comparison of Condition Rating Systems for Bridges in Three European Countries
## 2 Italy
### The Current State of Italian Road Bridges  
The Italian road network consists of many bridges and tunnels, with an incidence of infrastructures per kilometer among the highest in the world. Furthermore, the Italian territory is characterized by a marked vulnerability, both from a hydrogeological and seismic point of view. There are many road management bodies all over the country. The most important ones are ANAS (National Autonomous Highway Company) and AISCAT (Italian Association of Highway and Tunnel Concession Companies). ANAS manages a road network more than 32,000 km long (Figure 2a--data for the year 2022 [10]). Most of this network is made up of highways (about 1200 km) and national motorways (more than 25,000 km). The AISCAT-associated companies manage about 4500 km of highways [11]. Other road management bodies include the 107 Italian territorial provinces and more than 8000 municipalities which are responsible for many local roads. The ANSFISA agency (National Agency for Safety of Railways and Motorway and Highway Infrastructures) declares that there are more than 2000 tunnels and more than 21,000 bridges along national highways and motorways [12]. [PERSON] et al. [13] stated that the number of Italian bridges is approximately 120,000, but it is not confirmed due to the many stakeholders involved in the management of bridges. They also provided an Italian map representing the number of bridges for each region (Figure 2b), which are mostly located in the northern part of the country. However, nowadays there is not a comprehensive document collecting information about all the Italian bridges, since they are managed by many different and local regional entities. For this reason, the Italian government unveiled a digital platform in 2019, called AINOP (National Digital Archive of Public Infrastructures [14]), which aims to collect all the information relevant to all infrastructures over the national territory--including bridges--into a unique database. Up to now, almost 33,000 bridges have been collected within this digital platform and, in the future, information regarding the health condition of these infrastructures will be added, including the \(CoA\) evaluated following the new guidelines.  
Many of the existing Italian bridges and viaducts date from the post-World War II period and the phase of the Italian economic \"boom\" (around the 1960s), when a noticeable increase in vehicular traffic was detected. It should be noted that these bridges, frequently made of RC or pre-stressed RC, were built in a historical period when the concept of material durability was not given due consideration. For these reasons, the majority of the bridges in Italy are quite old, and very often present defects due to environmental and operating issues. Recently, the FABRE consortium for the research, assessment and monitoring  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**High Structural and Foundational Class**} \\ \cline{3-6}  & & **High** & Medium-High & Medium & Medium-Low & Low \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{**Seismic Class**} & **High** & & & & \\ \cline{2-6}  & **Medium-High** & & & & \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-6}  & **Medium-Low** & & & & \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-6}  & **Low** & & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 3: Example of table for the determination of overall bridge \(CoA\) (case of high structural and foundational risk).  
of bridges and viaducts [15] has started an activity for supporting the public roadway management entities in the adoption of the new guidelines all over the national territory. The use of the risk assessment procedure proposed by the new guidelines will support the increase in knowledge about the health condition of all bridges and the development of efficient maintenance activities.