Structural Health Monitoring of Bridges in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

The BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure and the University of British Columbia have recently embarked on a program to instrument key structures to provide confirmation of seismic capacity, assist in focusing retrofit efforts, detect damage from any cause and provide rapid damage assessment of those structures following a seismic event. The data from this instrumentation will be capable of remote configuration and will automatically upload via the internet. As part of this collaboration effective damage detection algorithms that will provide reliable intelligence close to real time have been developed and implemented. This paper provides an overview of present status of the bridge instrumentation program in BC and illustrates the current approach to monitor bridges.