Can you stop bridges breaking up in floods?

A number of bridges have misshapen or are on the verge of giving way in the Cambrian floods. But is there any way to guarantee this doesn't happen?

The collapse of the Northside bridge in Workington is one of the more distinguished results of the catastrophic flooding of the past few days in Cumbria.
Another crossing, the Calva Bridge, is also on the verge of collapse.
The main issue for many bridges that are in risk is the effect of "scour". When a bridge is built on a river bed of gravel, the racing floodwater scours away the bed just downstream of the piers on which the bridge rests.
At the same time there is massive force on the bridge from the fast-flowing river. This is naturally poorer for a bridge with a number of arches than for a single-span bridge.
The force can step up if trees and other debris pile against the bridge creating a dam effect.
And the pressure on the bridge is greatly increased if the flood waters reach the "deck" of the bridge.
Victorian bridges are often not "piled" - their piers are not built on piles driven deep into the river bed. Instead they are dug into the gravel bed at a more shallow level, says Alan Simpson, vice-chairman of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Scotland, and an expert on bridges and water.
"It is on the gravel bed of the river... people thought in those days that it won't get scoured away.
"In the past 20-30 years they have realized how much worse scour is than people used to think."
Incidents such as the collapse of railway bridges in Inverness in 1989, and at Glanrhyd in 1987, with the loss of four lives as part of a train dropped into the River Tywi, have enhanced understanding of how bridges get swept away in floods.