ABSTRACT: A recent project by Cork County Council has allowed the compilation and analysis of detailed inventory and inspection data of 1,400 bridges on its regional and local road network. Each bridge and its constituent components or elements have been visually inspected and their structural condition rated based on a defined scale of deterioration and damage. This paper presents data on bridge structure type and geometry as well as condition ratings for each bridge component. The worst performing bridge components and the most recurrent damage types are identified. Conclusions are drawn on the overall condition of the bridge stock, the critical structural components and the deterioration mechanisms that impact upon them. KEY WORDS: Bridge management systems; Structural inspection; Bridge defects; Data analysis. 1 INTRODUCTION The National Roads Authority (now Transport Infrastructure Ireland) has developed Eirspan as the Irish bridge management system [1]. Between 2012 and 2014, Cork County Council undertook a survey of bridges on regional and strategic local roads. The survey process comprised two distinct stages: (i). Bridge inventory collection where the name, location, type and geometry of the bridge stock are recorded and collated. For each structure, up to 58 separate parameters were recorded. (ii). Principal inspection where the damage type is recorded and a condition rating value is assigned to the constituent components and the overall bridge structure. For each structure, up to 21 separate parameters were recorded. The survey has thus yielded an extensive and detailed database of over 100,000 separate pieces of empirical information. To date, no analysis of bridge typology and physical condition based on this quantity of data has been undertaken on a regional Irish bridge stock. The available data set of inventory and principal inspection records provides an opportunity to undertake such an exploratory analysis. This paper describes the findings of the analysis and how the findings improve the understanding of the performance of the bridge stock. The scope of the study consists of data integration, summary and descriptive statistics, and the interpretation of results. The objectives of this study are to compile and consolidate the available data set into a usable tabular format and extract information to discover previously unknown patterns, trends and relationships within the data. The study has established the characteristics of the bridge stock in terms of geometry and condition ratings. The bridge components most susceptible to damage have been identified and a Pareto analysis has determined the most frequent types of damage that have impacted upon the bridges and their constituent elements. The cost of rehabilitation in terms of components and condition ratings has been determined. 2 METHODOLOGY The data set of the bridge survey observations has been generated by the Eirspan system in ‘Notepad’ format. Notepad is a plain text (i.e. data) editor for Microsoft Windows and is a basic text editing program that enables the creation of documents. The Notepad data files were imported into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where the data were sorted and checked for errors and inconsistencies. The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet provides a computer application for the organisation, analysis and storage of the data in tabular format The dataset, now in tabular spreadsheet format, has been manipulated and analysed and the results of queries undertaken form the basis for this paper. 3 BRIDGETYPOLOGY The database has records of 1,367 bridges, of which 435 were on regional roads and 932 were on strategic local roads. 3.1 Geometry Of the surveyed bridges, 1,244 (91%) have three spans or less as shown in Figure 1. Figure1. Number of spans of surveyed bridges. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 1 2 3 4 5 6 No. of bridges No. of spans An Analysis of a Data Set of 1,400 Bridge Inspections in County Cork. Liam Dromey 1,2 , John J. Murphy 2 , Brian O'Rourke 2 , Kieran Ruane 2,3 1 Cork County Council, County Hall, Cork, Ireland 2 Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, Cork Institute of Technology, Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland 3 RPS Group, Innishmore, Ballincollig, Co. Cork, Ireland email: liam.dromey@corkcoco.ie, johnjustin.murphy@cit.ie, brian.orourke@cit.ie, kieran.ruane@rpsgroup.com Civil Engineering Research in Ireland 2016 85