Challenges around climate resilient road and rail infrastructure management through structural health monitoring

Abstract

Our built infrastructure is degrading but there is inadequate resource to change them. Under such circumstances, it is important to prioritize the maintenance, repair, rehabilitation or replacement. Advancements in sensors, communication systems and algorithms for detecting various features of interests have created significant opportunities for such prioritization and decision making in a data-driven manner. While such opportunities exist and traditional methods of inspection can be partially or completely be replaced by monitoring, several fundamental and practical problems can be a barrier to implement this is real networks. In particular, when climate hazards and their effects on such built infrastructure is a major issue for most countries, overcoming such challenges become really important. The European Union (EU) Interreg Atlantic Area project SIRMA has been investigating these aspects by bringing together several countries in the EU region. This paper investigates some of the challenges that must be overcome for a sensor-based, data-driven, climate hazard-aware framework to be effectively operational and to provide value for the stakeholders of such networks. The importance of creating evidence bases and real-life demonstrations will be highlighted. The difficulties of moving policy aspects in line with technological changes will also be discussed. Overall, the paper is expected to shed light on some of the practical aspects of Structural Health Monitoring for maintaining our built infrastructure effectively against natural hazards, including climate effects.