Abstract
Infrastructure is the backbone of the US economy and a necessary input to every economic output [1]. The cost of infrastructure maintenance and management demands significant expense for government and private companies. Infrastructure owners want to increase efficiency and improve their bottom-line from existing infrastructure rather than building new ones [2]. One of the significant challenges for the engineering community has been adopting new technologies such as low-cost wireless smart sensors, augmented reality, Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-based Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). To receive first-hand insight from infrastructure owners, industry professionals and researchers, a workshop entitled ‘Infrastructure, Maintenance and Management Using New Technology’ was conducted in Fort Worth, Texas. In this paper the findings from the workshop are discussed. Stakeholders highlighted safety of the bridge inspectors as the priority in the maintenance and management work. Based on the findings of this workshop it now clear that adopting new technologies leads to higher safety for field inspectors. Key aspects include importance of new technologies for obtaining actionable data for maintenance and management, owner’s perspectives on development of future technologies, current research progress and challenges faced by infrastructure industry in implementing new technologies are presented.
Highlights
American Railroads carry 40% of total freight ton-miles in United States over 100,000 bridges spanning over 140,000 miles of rail track [3]
At the beginning and at the end of the workshop, participants were asked about their level of confidence in introducing new technologies in future infrastructure maintenance and management work
Infrastructure owners are concerned about the increasing cost of maintenance and management of aging infrastructure, and they believe an increasing utilization of new technology can significantly reduce the cost
Summary
American Railroads carry 40% of total freight ton-miles in United States over 100,000 bridges spanning over 140,000 miles of rail track [3]. Railroad companies are private entities responsible for maintaining their own infrastructure as mandated by Federal Railway Administration (FRA). It is in their best interest to keep their railway infrastructure up to the serviceable standard to avoid any type of delay in the service. This can be achieved by Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of the infrastructure [4]. Since the work is in progress, in near future, we will be testing the application in real field where bridge inspector will use the application to visualize information as opposed to using traditional form of documentation for viewing past inspection reports
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