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Canada’s buildings, bridges, roads, rail transit, potable water systems and wastewater systems provide shelter and safe drinking water, enable transport of people and goods, and collect and treat wastewater. They provide basic and core services for Canadians and are critical to Canada’s economy and the nation’s quality of life. These buildings and core public infrastructure (B&CPI) are subject to time-varying and uncertain effects due to climate change, as well as more frequent extreme weather events, such as flooding. These climate changeinduced pressures could potentially reduce the safety, serviceability, functionality, and service life of Canada’s B&CPI. In addition, Canadian B&CPI are aging and deteriorating due to different degradation mechanisms, as well as inadequate inspection and maintenance practices – issues potentially made worse by the effects of climate change. The Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure (CRBCPI) initiative was established as a research and development partnership between the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Infrastructure Canada to develop new and revised codes, standards, specifications, guidelines and decision support tools to ensure that Canada’s new and existing B&CPI are more resilient to the effects of climate change and extreme weather events. Funded by Infrastructure Canada and managed by NRC, the effort brings together experts from across Canada. Initiative priority areas include buildings, bridges, roads, potable water, storm water, and wastewater systems, and rail transit guideways. The initiative addresses resilience to climate change impacts on temperature, precipitation, wind and extreme weather events, including flooding, wildfires and extreme wind, which can affect these types of B&CPI across the country.

Les bâtiments, les ponts, les routes, le transport en commun sur rail de même que les réseaux d'alimentation en eau potable et d'évacuation des eaux usées du Canada fournissent un abri et de l'eau potable, et permettent le transport des personnes et des marchandises ainsi que la collecte et le traitement des eaux usées. Ils fournissent des services de base essentiels aux Canadiens et sont d'une importance cruciale pour l'économie canadienne et la qualité de vie de la nation. Ces bâtiments et infrastructures publiques de base (BIPB) subissent des effets incertains et variables dans le temps en raison des changements climatiques, et sont soumis à des événements météorologiques extrêmes plus fréquents, comme les inondations. Ces pressions induites par les changements climatiques pourraient éventuellement réduire la sécurité, le rendement en service, la fonctionnalité et la durée de vie des BIPB du Canada. De plus, les BIPB canadiens vieillissent et se détériorent en raison de différents mécanismes de dégradation, ainsi que de pratiques inadéquates d'inspection et d'entretien – des problèmes potentiellement aggravés par les effets des changements climatiques. L'initiative Bâtiments et infrastructures publiques de base résilients aux changements climatiques (BIPBRCC) a été établie sous forme de partenariat de recherche-développement entre le Conseil national de recherches du Canada (CNRC) et Infrastructure Canada afin d'élaborer des codes, des normes, des spécifications, des lignes directrices et des outils décisionnels nouveaux et révisés pour rendre les BIPB nouveaux et existants au Canada plus résilients face aux effets des changements climatiques et des événements météorologiques extrêmes. Financée par Infrastructure Canada et gérée par le CNRC, cette initiative réunit des experts de partout au pays. Les secteurs prioritaires de l'initiative comprennent les bâtiments, les ponts, les routes, les réseaux d'eau potable, d'eaux pluviales et d'eaux usées, ainsi que les transports en commun sur rail. L'initiative porte sur la résilience face aux impacts des changements climatiques sur la température, les précipitations, le vent et les événements météorologiques extrêmes, notamment les inondations, les incendies de forêt et le vent extrême, qui peuvent affecter ces types de BIPB partout au pays.

10th International Conference on Short and Medium Span Bridges, July 31 - August 3, 2018, Quebec City, QC Canada

Columns are the most critical elements in structural systems. They may fail catastrophically in buildings exposed to bomb blast, which could lead to progressive collapse of the entire structure. Past global blast events have shown that preventing progressive collapse would significantly reduce the number of casualties and minimize structural damage. Hence, columns in existing critical facilities must be upgraded to resist the effects of blast loads in order to minimize the risk of fatalities, injuries, and damage costs. To predict the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) structures under blast load, single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) dynamic analysis can be used. However, in this analysis the force-displacement relationship (also called resistance function) of the structural member must be identified. An idealized resistance function can be established by simply specifying the moment capacity and the corresponding curvature for the section at different load levels, like yield level (My) and ultimate level (Mu ) and by knowing the equivalent plastic hinge length (Lp). This length can be predicted using one of the models available in the literature. In RC columns exposed to catastrophic events (e.g., significant earthquake, significant blast or impact) plastic hinges form at maximum moment regions where the most damage occurs. Plastic hinge length (Lp) can be defined as the virtual length over which the plastic curvature is assumed to be constant. The rotation over a cantilever RC member can be computed by integrating curvatures along the member length if Lp is known, from which the tip displacement can be computed; and vice versa. For this reason it is essential to predict the plastic hinge length with acceptable accuracy since it is a key step in correlating the section-level response to the member level response of a concrete column. Indeed, the plasticity spreads over a larger physical length, referred to as the yield length (Ly). The yield length is the distance between the critical section and the location where the tension steel reaches its yield stress. Hence, the plastic hinge length can be expressed as Lp= βLy, where β is a dimensionless reduction factor for the curvature distribution near the support and it is always smaller than 1.0. While a large number of studies were carried out to estimate the plastic hinge length formed in un-retrofitted RC beams and columns subjected to monotonic or cyclic loading, only a very limited studies were conducted to investigate the plastic hinge formation mechanism in FRP-jacketed RC columns. No experimental investigation has been conducted so far to compute the plastic hinge length of RC concrete elements exposed to blast effects despite the importance of this parameter in establishing the resistance function. This function in turn is essential in obtaining the blast response of the member using SDOF model. The objective of this paper is to present the experimental evidence of the enhancement of the structural performance of RC columns when retrofitted by CFRP laminate. The focus will be on the ductility enhancement by increasing the deformation capacities and plastic hinges length. This paper presents part of the results of a large study to develop high performance protection systems for concrete columns subjected to blast loads. The results show that columns retrofitted with CFRP laminate have higher blast resistance, significantly higher ductility in terms of longer plastic hinge compared to non-retrofitted columns. Columns retrofitted with CFRP laminate containing woven ±45˚ CFRP fabrics developed longer yield lengths than those that had unidirectional fabrics only when subjected to the same blast loads. Hence, CFRP strengthening laminate including woven ±45˚ CFRP fabric improved the ductility of the column. It can also be concluded that when the applied lateral load is less than the column lateral capacity, the residual axial load reached 95% of the initial applied axial load and the residual deformation at mid height is very small., The Fifth International Symposium on Life-Cycle Engineering (IALCCE 2016), 16–20 October 2016, Delft, The Netherlands

Highway bridges are critical links in Canada’s transportation network, which enable personal mobility and transport of goods that support trade and economic development of neighbouring communities. Highway bridges should be designed and maintained to last at least 75 years with minimum maintenance. The average service life of bridge structures vary from 30 years to 100 years, which are continually extended by using different maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. Different technologies are used for bridge life extensions, including different combinations of protective systems, repair, strengthening, rehabilitation, and replacement actions of decks, superstructures, substructures and entire bridges. The growing concerns with aging bridges, increased load and reduced strength, environmental protection and vulnerability to extreme events require the development of resilient transportation infrastructure that minimizes traffic disruption and ensures social, economic and environmental sustainability and resilience over the entire life cycle of the bridge. Given the considerable uncertainty that is associated with the key parameters and physical models that affect the life cycle performance of highway bridges, there is a need to develop robust mechanistic and stochastic models to predict the service life of bridges. This paper presents a practical reliability-based approach for the life cycle design of resilient concrete bridges that enables to achieve long life bridges with an acceptable probability of failure, which minimizes traffic disruption and reduces the life cycle costs to the bridge owners and users. An example illustrates the benefits of implementing a life cycle-based design approach through the construction of high performance concrete highway bridge structures that yield lower risk of failure when compared to conventional normal concrete construction, in terms of lower traffic disruption, life cycle costs to the bridge owners and users; lower CO2 emissions and volume of construction waste materials; and reduced accident costs., Transportation 2014: Past, Present, Future - 2014 Conference and Exhibition of the Transportation Association of Canada, Sept. 27 -Oct. 1, 2014, Montréal, Canada

8th Annual Summit on the Future of Canada’s Infrastructure, 16-17 September 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada

International Sustainable Built Environment Conference, 28-30 January 2014, Doha, Qatar

Third Meeting on Climatic Data and Loads and Flood-Resistant Buildings

International Workshop on Floods and Climate Change, 2017