Smart infrastructure – are we delivering on the promise?

Many bridges across the world have very extensive structural health monitoring (SHM) systems that generate vast quantities of data. There are many engineers and researchers who envisage a brave new world of smart bridges with ubiquitous sensors providing real time information on all aspects of bridge performance. How realistic is this aspiration? How do we currently utilise the data generated in existing bridge SHM systems? How are such SHM systems designed in the first place? A major research programme at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) at Cambridge University in the UK has been at the forefront of some of these smart technology developments, specifically in fibre optics, wireless sensor networks, MEMS sensors, computer vision techniques and data interpretation tools. A recent PhD study by Webb in which he investigated the manner in which such monitoring systems are currently designed, deployed and utilised for bridges has led to a re-evaluation of their effectiveness. A new framework which provides guidance for bridge engineers on how to design such SHM systems has been developed and will be presented in this paper.