Sustainability and resilience in the rehabilitation of road infrastructures after an extreme event: an integrated approach

For road infrastructures, the concepts of sustainability and resilience are becoming more and more relevant.The sustainability is closely linked with the concept of development that meets the needs of the present without compromisingthe ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The resilience is usually connected with the occurrenceof extreme events or unusual disturbances (earthquake, landslide, floods) during the life cycle of infrastructuresand refers to their ability of recover the previous functionality. Usually, the two concepts that account for two desiredqualities of the infrastructures are applied following separate approaches. Better choices in road design, maintenanceand rehabilitation should lead to an improvement of both qualities. On the other hand, an in deep analysis of the sustainabilityand resilience demonstrates a significant number of similar characteristics. In the light of the above premises,in the present paper, the suitability of an integrated approach in the choice of the rehabilitation alternatives after an extremeevent is evaluated. A method to assess the sustainability, based on life cycle costs, and to estimate the resilience issetup. It resulted that an integrated perspective can be pursued and both resilience and sustainability allow addressingan appropriate amount of technical, economic and environmental/social issues and can lead to identifying the most efficientsolution of rehabilitation.