A Scoping Review of Information-Modeling Development in Bridge Management Systems

Abstract

Transportation assets represent a critical element of public infrastructures, and bridge networks are an essential part of these assets. A system that includes several tools for managing the bridges is called a bridge management system (BMS). BMSs are built up to provide long-term health verification for bridges and assure safe serviceability. With the advent of powerful computers in the mid-1980s, BMSs became more electronic and, consequently, capable of processing more data than a paper system. Building information modeling (BIM) is an emerging technology with commanding visualization and informatization ability, making it a perfect tool for generating modern management systems. Bridge information modeling (BrIM) is a developed concept extracted from BIM that concentrates on bridges. In this paper, the use of BrIM in the development of bridge management systems during the recent decade is verified through a scoping review of the state-of-the-art literature. The broad nature of the scoping review provides chances for rapidly reviewing evidence in emerging topics and analyzing knowledge gaps; it is used to capture the cutting-edge concept of information modeling in the body of literature. In this study, search resulted in a final refined list of 78 journal articles published in the recent decade, categorized into six different topic areas. This paper aims to verify different aspects of using information modeling in bridge management and identify the knowledge gaps, limitations, and emergent works for industrial and academic investigators. Descriptive and content analyses are presented to clarify the researchers’ focal points in this review, which shows trending keywords, leading journals, and articles’ frequency in each field. This study indicates that the concentration of BrIM researchers is on new inspection and test methods and maintenance optimization with a particular focus on concrete structures.