Critical Need to Embrace and Adapt Resilience - Reframing Critical Infrastructure, Connectivity, and Disaster Governance

Joshi Sachidanand and Nidhi Nagabhatla are the authors of this article.
 

This is an open-access article.

Bridges are often treated as transport assets: structures to be designed, inspected, maintained and replaced. This approach is no longer sufficient. Across the world, floods, storms, landslides, earthquakes, wildfires, heatwaves, and other hazards are becoming more interconnected, while aging infrastructure, urban expansion, and constrained public budgets increase vulnerability. When a bridge fails, the immediate loss is not limited to concrete, steel, or road capacity. Communities may be isolated, emergency services delayed, hospitals become harder to reach, supply chains interrupted, and local economies disrupted.
 

A bridge is therefore simultaneously a transport structure, a public service platform, an emergency lifeline, and a spatial-planning decision. We argue that bridge resilience must become a central concern of disaster governance and infrastructure planning. Civil authorities and planning committees should move beyond conventional Bridge Management Systems towards Bridge Resilience Systems: integrate frameworks that connect engineering, land-use planning, emergency response, ecosystem management, climate adaptation, social equity, and long-term investment.