Issues in Infrastructure Health Monitoring for Management

TLDR

Infrastructure health monitoring faces critical issues that can be grouped into three overlapping categories, which must be addressed to enable meaningful applications. The study aims to develop and apply engineering tools, methods, and knowledge to address societal and educational aspects of infrastructure management, emphasizing integrated research, education, and practice. The authors describe challenges in integrating intelligent transportation and structural systems into an optimal asset‑management framework and illustrate these with ongoing research on short‑span and long‑span bridge health monitoring. Examples from current research on short‑span and long‑span bridges illustrate the practical challenges in health monitoring.

Abstract

The most critical issues that have been identified as being needed to implement meaningful and beneficial applications of health monitoring for infrastructure management are discussed. Issues related to infrastructure health monitoring for management can be defined in three overlapping categories. In this context, engineering tools, methods, and knowledge should be developed and utilized to answer societal and educational aspects of the problem while taking advantage of the information tools and methodologies available today. The need for integrated research, education, and practice for infrastructure management is emphasized. The challenges in the integration of intelligent transportation and structural systems concepts within an optimum integrated asset management framework are described and illustrated. Examples from ongoing research on the health monitoring of short-span bridge families and long-span bridges are presented to illustrate the issues.