Next Generation of Transportation Infrastructure Management: Fusion of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM)

Abstract

Bridges are one of the most important elements of the sustainable transportation infrastructure network that require significant care and consideration. Aging and deterioration are two main complications in their operation and maintenance that require precise data and efficient technologies to improve the quality of their lifecycle management. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have been altering the infrastructure management process by converting it into an automated process to capture, store, analyze, and manage the data. While the data have helped the management process, the issues of heterogeneity of the data and non-interoperable databases are still challenges for fully integrated management of the infrastructure. Thus, there is a crucial need for an integrated database that can help in consolidation of data management. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is one of the recent technologies that its benefits have motivated its utilization in the transportation infrastructure, and their specific use for bridges is known as Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM). Currently bridges are being inspected biannually and only structural data are being recorded for their assessment. This paper suggests the inclusion of traffic data in lifecycle management of bridges and introduces ITS as a great source of data, and BrIM as a great visual database that can help in enhancing the integration and management of databases. Fusion of ITS data with BrIM can provide many benefits for efficient operation and management of bridges that eventually improves the quality of facility management and helps as a reliable tool for decision making and budget allocation. In this paper, BIM and ITS capabilities have been discussed and finally a framework has been suggested to illuminate the dataflow process.