E-bridge 3.0: A strategic approach to structural health monitoring of bridges in Costa Rica

The general condition of road infrastructure is a major weakness of the Costa Rican economy. In particular, a significant percentage of national bridges show an average or critical condition regarding parts of their structure. On the other hand, road and bridge infrastructure is crucial for the national economy since it promotes activities such as tourism and commercial trade. In this context, proper planning and prioritization of infrastructure projects is of high importance for related government institutions. In order to support these strategic activities, it is necessary to gather and monitor up-to-date information originating from different distributed systems and tools. e-Bridge 3.0 is a recent on-going project at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC) aimed at the design of a bridge monitoring system to integrate strategic information about bridge structures. Modern business intelligence techniques will be applied to generate strategic performance indicators regarding for instance general reliability and remaining lifespan. This paper introduces the e-Bridge 3.0 project as an initiative towards the establishment of a national bridge monitoring system, which would have a significant impact on the effectiveness of national civil infrastructure management.