BD Spokes: PLANNING: MIDWEST: Big Data Innovations for Bridge Health

美国各地的桥梁继续以惊人的速度恶化，美国土木工程师协会估计，改善美国功能陈旧或结构缺陷的桥梁需要花费超过760亿美元。这表明了对创新的桥梁健康监测解决方案的巨大需求，这种解决方案可以在不危及公共安全的情况下从战略上指导管理、维护和更换计划。不幸的是，改善桥梁管理、维修或更换方式的需要面临着与美国交通网络其他部分类似的问题和要求：资源不断萎缩，管理机构无法从桥梁健康数据中获得必要的见解，无法找到可行的解决方案。为了讨论如何解决这些关键问题，研究人员、从业者以及代表公共和私营部门(交通基础设施和建筑环境所有者、运营商、设计师和维护人员)的个人与大数据技术和分析专家一起参加了2015年10月由内布拉斯加州大学主办的首届桥接大数据研讨会。在这次研讨会上，大数据技术可以帮助提供及时的解决方案，这一点变得很明显。同样明显的是，过去侧重于利用桥梁健康监测和大数据技术作为管理和维护/更换过程的一部分的努力是支离破碎的，所产生的数据集被认为是不可信的，并且没有得到充分利用。该项目将(1)编目数据集，包括来自私营部门、学术界和政府机构的来源、版权、许可、收集程序和预期的访问控制，(2)获得利益相关者的承诺，并主办与小型工作组的协作研讨会，以讨论、导入/导出和共享桥梁结构健康监测数据，以及(3)征求企业/研究人员的建议，以开发集成不同和大量数据源的创新应用程序。预计该项目的发现将使中西部大数据枢纽交通中心受益，并可能为高速公路、建筑、配电网络和其他民用基础设施实体的类似活动提供参考。该项目的成果将被推广到国家和国际技术组织，以直接影响劳动力发展、教育和研究计划。总而言之，该项目将对我国有效维护桥梁健康和安全的能力产生直接影响。

Bridges across the U.S. continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate and the American Society of Civil Engineers estimate a cost of over $76 billion to improve the country's functionally obsolete or structurally deficient bridges. This indicates a significant demand for innovative bridge health monitoring solutions that can strategically guide management, maintenance and replacement programs without risking public safety. Unfortunately, the need to improve how our bridges are managed and repaired or replaced faces similar issues and demands as the rest of the U.S. transportation network: continuously shrinking resources and governing bodies who do not have the necessary insights from bridge health data to find a workable solution. To discuss how to address these critical problems, researchers, practitioners, and individuals representing public and private sectors (transportation infrastructure and built environment owners, operators, designers and maintainers) convened with Big Data technology and analytics experts participated at the inaugural BRIDGE-ing Big Data Workshop hosted by the University of Nebraska in October 2015. During this workshop, it became clear that Big Data technology could assist with providing a timely solution. It also was apparent that past efforts focusing on utilizing bridge health monitoring and big data techniques as part of the management and maintenance/replacement processes are fragmented, and resulting datasets are not deemed trustworthy and are under-utilized. This project will (1) catalog datasets including sources, copyrights, license, collection procedures, and expected access controls from private sector, academia, and government agencies, (2) obtain commitments from stakeholders and host collaboration workshops with small working groups to discuss, import/export, and share bridge structural health monitoring data, and (3) solicit proposals from businesses/researchers to develop innovative applications that integrate disparate and voluminous data sources. It is anticipated that this project's findings will benefit the Midwest Big Data Hub transportation spoke and potentially inform similar activities for highways, buildings, power distribution networks and other civil infrastructure entities. Findings from this project will be promoted to national and international technical organizations, to directly impact workforce development, education and research programs. Combined, this project will make a direct impact on our country's ability to efficiently maintain the health and safety of its bridges.