In the years to come, Korea will have the privilege to become the country presenting the most diversified bridge construction activities that will constitute precious case studies for the international bridge community. Until 2011, about 50 major bridges with various types will link some of the 3,000 islands of the peninsula to the mainland, which are taking place in the ambitious plan for building an efficient national transportation network and set the bases for the future strategic hub of Northeast Asia. In order to sustain this unprecedented construction activity of infrastructure systems and the encouraging technological accomplishments that have been acquired to date, the Korean R&D community agreed with the necessity to prepare for the next generation of construction technology. There is a clear need to develop and construct a new generation of high performance facilities by means of enhanced materials, advanced structural systems and technologies as well as upgraded or improved specifications or standards in a lifetime perspective.
This paper identifies some major technical issues and challenges for the next generation of bridge and addresses relevant and systematic construction-related R&D programs in Korea. Among them, the Korea Bridge Design & Engineering Research Center (KBRC) has been launched in 2004 as a national research program of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation to be the core of new research and technology transfer program in the area of bridge technology and expedite the process of full transition to the reliability- and performance-based bridge design codes and specifications in Korea. Other large R&D programs are also reviewed in terms of durability and lifecycle cost with lifetime perspective like the Bridge 200 R&D project of the Korea Institute of Construction Technology and high-performance materials like the High Performance Construction Material Research Center (HIPER CONMAT).
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