Novel remote sensing monitoring program of bridges in Australia

The governmental authorities of Victoria in Australia are planning to deploy a remote structural health monitoring program for bridges.

The program will be a joint venture between the Australian government and the US company Xerox. The overall goal of the project will be the optimized management and maintenance of the bridge infrastructure across Victoria.

VicTrack and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) carried out several trials of the monitoring program in 2018 and 2019; i.e., four bridges were monitored during these trials: the Banksia St Heidelberg bridge, the Hawkstowe Station bridge, the St Kilda Junction bridge, and the Taboritha Road bridge

The novel monitoring technology uses tiny fiber optic sensors attached to the bridge to accurately measure and estimate structural strain, thermal response, bending, loads, vibration, and corrosion. Thereafter, the collected data, that can be seen in real time, are analyzed to deliver information through an interactive dashboard.

The system enables the infrastructure owners and operators to evaluate, in a timely manner, whether the bridge has structural problems and needs repairs. Therefore, the maintenance budget can be optimized targeting the structures that require repairs more urgently. Characteristically, the Minister for Transport Infrastructure Jacinta Allan stated: “This technology being rolled out on priority bridges enables remote real-time monitoring – meaning a small problem could be identified before it becomes a big costly problem that causes unnecessary delays to Victorians.”

Nonetheless, the announcement of the remote sensing program by the Victorian government, raised concern among structural engineers regarding the openness of the bidding process.

John Vazey, an engineering consultant and industry liaison for the Australian Network of Structural Health Monitoring (ANSHM), stated in a letter, reported by the Australian Financial Review, to Premier Daniel Andrews and Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan: “The Victorian government’s decision to potentially award $50 million of structural monitoring work (on Victorian taxpayer-owned assets) to a proprietary limited company without a competitive bid process does not reflect the robust governance and process expected for government procurement.”

A spokeswoman for the Victorian government responded that the technology has been “subject to a robust trial period that involved a number of Victorian organizations and government departments”.