UK Bridges Moving Under Climate Change: Data-Driven Assessment of Corrosion Risk

About the project

About the Project Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing UK infrastructure. Bridges keep people, goods and services moving every day: they support commuting, emergency access, freight, public transport and local economies. However, many bridges were designed for environmental conditions that are now changing. More intense rainfall, longer wet periods, temperature changes, wet-dry cycling and coastal exposure can all influence corrosion in reinforced concrete and steel bridge components. Bridge inspections tell us what condition an asset is in today. They can record cracking, corrosion, section loss, coating deterioration and other signs of damage. But an important question remains: will the same observed condition mean the same future risk under climate change? This PhD will develop data-driven and uncertainty-informed methods to understand how climate change may affect corrosion deterioration in UK bridge infrastructure. The project will combine civil engineering, climate data, deterioration modelling, uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis to identify which climate-related factors are most important for future corrosion risk. The project will move beyond simply asking “how much deterioration might occur?” and instead ask: which climate driver is controlling future deterioration risk, and when does that change how engineers should interpret current condition evidence? The student will investigate climate-related exposure variables such as wetness duration, humidity, temperature, wet-dry cycling and chloride-related coastal exposure. These will be connected to corrosion deterioration in reinforced concrete and steel components using computational modelling, probabilistic methods and data-driven analysis.

Research areas