About the author  ⁄ Ferdinando Cannella, Ph. D.

Ferdinando Cannella, Ph. D. is the Industrial Robotic Facility coordinator at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. His research is focused on industrial robotics and AI applied to inspection and monitoring (both for structures and infrastructures recent as well as heritage ones), material manipulation, elastic robot control and reconfigurable grippers. He is the PI of the San Giorgio Bridge robots project and main reference for the I&M at IIT.

The 2018 collapse of the Morandi Bridge was international news. Completed in 1967, the bridge carried the A10 motorway over the Polcevera Valley in Genoa, Italy. The dramatic collapse and deaths of 43 people shocked Europe, particularly an Italian engineering community that prides itself on a long legacy of engineering excellence. Many theories have been put forward regarding the cause of the collapse, ranging from very human lapses in maintenance and judgment to a lightning strike on a primary cable stay. As of this writing, the cause of the collapse is still under investigation. But this isn’t a story about the Morandi Bridge collapse. It’s the story of what came next.

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STRUCTURE magazine