Evaluating Bridge Reliability Following Natural and Man-Made Hazards in Real-Time: Formulating an International Collaborative Research Program

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Abstract for: Evaluating Bridge Reliability Following Natural and Man-Made Hazards in Real-Time: Formulating an International Collaborative Research Program, CMS proposal 0450420PI: Ahmet Aktan, DrexelThis proposal is being submitted to NSF's Structural Systems and Engineering: StructuralSystems and Hazards Mitigation of Structures program of the Division of Civil andMechanical Systems. Dr. Steven McCabe is the Program Director and Dr. Galip Ulsoy is theDivision Director. The objective of the proposal is to solicit a small travel grant for agroup of academic, government and industry representatives to travel from the US to Japanfor three related purposes: (a) Participating at the International Association for BridgeManagement and Safety Conference at Kyoto, Japan (IABMAS?04, 18-22 October, 2004), (b)Participating at a meeting of the Executive Council of the International Society forStructural Health Monitoring and Intelligent Infrastructures (ISHMII) that is beingarranged to take place at Kyoto on October 20, (c) Participating at a half-day Workshopbetween the US and International participants of a problem-focused collaborative researchproject: "Evaluating the Reliability of Highway Bridges In Real-Time Following Hazards ByStructural Health Monitoring" during 17 October.The research project for "Bridge Reliability Following Hazards.." offers significantpotential for buy-in from bridge owners. This is necessary to overcome the reluctance ofmost bridge owners to embrace new technology and to demonstrate how leveraging recentresearch and technology development pays by advancing the state-of-practice forpost-hazard emergency response and recovery of the highway transportation infrastructure.We note that there is consensus between government engineers from State DOT's such asCALTRANS, as well as FHWA and USGS that reliable post-hazard condition assessment ofcritical elements of the highway infrastructure is perhaps the single most pressingproblem urgently requiring research and leveraging of technology for advancing thestate-of-practice. Based on various meetings between groups of stakeholders at Sacramento,Irvine and Bethlehem, the outline of a collaborative multi-institutional research projecthas been formulated by a group of academic, government and industry participants. Theresearch will be detailed in a proposal before January '05. The US participants of thiscollaborative project will be soliciting funding from various federal and state governmentagencies, and especially the NEES Program, while the European and Japanese participantsalready have or will receive funding from their respective governments. The outline ofthis project and the current participants will be described further in the following.In addition to supporting the travel of a US delegation to continue building an extremelyrewarding international collaboration with their counterparts from Canada, Europe and theFar East, a travel grant requested by this proposal will continue to serve for building astrategic relationship between the two U.S. federal government agencies that haveresponsibility for advancing the engineering and management of critical infrastructuresystems. Since 23 April 2003, NSF and FHWA have been exploring a synergistic partnershipfor launching a holistic and problem-focused research initiative to enhance theoperations, protection and preservation of the highway transportation infrastructure. Thisprogram is envisioned to take advantage of actual highways and bridges as test-sites thatwill be transformed into field laboratories for scientific research. There is furtheropportunity to expand an NSF-FHWA partnership by including USGS and NIST as we expect thatdelegates from these latter agencies will also be present. Additional information on thebackground of the proposed partnership for research and collaborations between theacademic and industry communities associated with NSF and FHWA is presented in thefollowing sections of the proposal.