Automation based structural monitoring systems for ordinary bridges

Demography of bridge stocks in various organisations and countries show great number of small bridges, making them of special interest in bridge management and life-cycle engineering. Improvements in analysis methods, input reliability or accuracy of bridge management systems will have notable impact to overall life-cycle costs. Recent progress in automation technology has revealed possibility to develop bridge monitoring systems, which by their properties are suitable to widespread usage for ordinary small bridges. In the near future, bridge management systems may consist on two bridge groups for “not instrumented” and “instrumented” bridges. Aim of this paper is to describe one example of implementing automation based bridge monitoring system, and discuss its integration into bridge management. It also addresses some envisaged developments in various disciplines to fully take benefit of the possibilities of the technology.