AI technology helps maintain bridges and tunnels

Technology company Dynamic Infrastructure is expanding its Artificial Intelligence pilot project which allows bridge and tunnel owners and operators to obtain visual diagnosis of assets they manage to help reduce maintenance costs.

The pilot project is with the Public Works Department of New York’s Suffolk County. After the successful completion of a pilot involving one bridge, the parties have agreed to expand the use of the AI-based technology to 74 bridges.

“The latest project expansion aims to use our technology to cover the entire inventory by Q2 2021,” said Saar Dickman, co-founder, and CEO of Dynamic Infrastructure. He added that Suffolk County is typical of the situation in the US at large, where data from the Federal Highway Administration deemed that approximately 30% of all bridges in the US were in fair or poor condition.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which evaluates US infrastructure, more than 56,000 bridges were classified as being ‘structurally deficient’.

Dynamic Infrastructure’s AI continuously processes past and current inspection reports and visuals, identifying future maintenance risks and evolving defects. The technology provides live, cloud-based, risk analysis of any bridge or tunnel and automatically alerts when changes are detected in maintenance and operating conditions, before they develop into large-scale failures.

The platform creates a ‘visual medical record’ for each asset, based on existing images taken from past and current inspection reports and interim inspections. The images are compared and serve as the basis for alerts on changes in maintenance conditions.

“The system allows any operator, inspector or maintenance engineer to have actionable intelligence at their fingertips in order to decide if, when and how the daily maintenance and maintenance projects should be conducted, by supplying instant alerts about anomalies,” said Kevin Reigrut, member of Dynamic Infrastructure’s board of advisors and former executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority.

The November issue of International Construction includes a feature on bridges. Download the issue for free here.