New bridge technology for sustainable development

This paper describes a 20-year programme of the development of new advanced composite material applications in bridges to improve durability, lower whole-life cost, lessen disruption to traffic and lower environmental impact. The work is described within and follows the Framework for Effective Innovation set out by the Civil Engineering Research Foundation in the USA in 1996. The paper covers the development of global standards and performance criteria, the building of demonstration projects, examples of cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing and the use of partnering. Many examples are given of applications worldwide. The paper concludes with a brief description of ongoing work to create performance specifications for sustainable development across all disciplines, which builds on the lessons learned from this work.