Bridge Health Monitoring: Cyber-Enabled Wireless Monitoring Systems for the Protection of Deteriorating National Infrastructure Systems

SC Solutions Inc. is a key team member in the 2008 NIST-TIP Cyber-Enabled Wireless Monitoring Systems for the Protection of Deteriorating National Infrastructure Systems. This $19-million project is funded by $9-million from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and is expected to run from 2009 -- 2013. It is a Joint Venture (JV) led by the University of Michigan (UofM), Ann Arbor, MI, in partnership with with five private firms in Michigan, New York and California.

Under this project the JV team is developing a comprehensive system for monitoring and assessing the structural health and integrity of major infrastructure elements such as bridges on a regional basis, with innovations ranging in scale from “smart material”-based sensors at the level of individual structural components up through structure-level data integration and interpretation to a Web-based system for information aggregation and decision support at the regional level.

SC Solutions is contributing its extensive and unique experience in both bridge engineering and control engineering, and developing methods and tools for effective model-based data analysis and health monitoring. As part of the project we are working with Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) and the JV team members to test this new technology on the New Carquinez Bridge, a long-span bridge that connects the Solano and Contra Costa Counties, located between Vallejo (on the North side) and Crockett (on the South side) in California.

This project has been featured as a special report in the evening news of KTVU, a local San Francisco Bay Area TV station.

For more information, see:

• Announcement by the University of Michigan
• NIST-TIP project brief
• KTVU special report

Related Publications

• M. Kurata, J. P. Lynch, T. Galchev, M. Flynn, P. Hipley, V. Jacob, G. W. van der Linden, A. Mortazawi, K. Najafi, R. L. Peterson, L.-H. Sheng, D. Sylvester, E. Thometz, A Two-Tiered Self-Powered Wireless Monitoring System Architecture for Bridge Health Management, In: "Nondestructive Characterization for Composite Materials, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Infrastructure, and Homeland Security 2010", Ed. Peter J. Shull, Aaron A. Diaz, H. Felix Wu, doi: 10.1117/12.848212, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7649, San Diego, CA, USA, March 7-11, 2010.

• G. W. van der Linden, A. Emami-Naeini, R. L. Kosut, H. Sedarat, J. P. Lynch, Near-Optimal Sensor Placement for Health Monitoring of Civil Structures, In: "Nondestructive Characterization for Composite Materials, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Infrastructure, and Homeland Security 2010", Ed. Peter J. Shull, Aaron A. Diaz, H. Felix Wu, doi: 10.1117/12.847704, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7649, San Diego, CA, USA, March 7-11, 2010.

• G. W. van der Linden, A. Emami-Naeini, R .L. Kosut, H. Sedarat, and J. P. Lynch, Optimal Sensor Placement for Health Monitoring of Civil Structures, 2011 American Control Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA, June 29 - July 01, 2011, pp. 3116 -3121, 2011.