Conceptual Framework for IoT-Based Structural Health Monitoring of RC Bridges for Maintenance Decision-Making

Infrastructure development serves as an indicator of a country’s social and economic growth. Bridges are the key assets of infrastructure projects that are built for a design life of more than 50 years. During their lifespan, they are subjected to defects and deterioration due to physical changes, chemical attacks, internal reactions, etc. that are required to be addressed by timely inspection and monitoring. Inspection practices have a great impact on maintenance planning and decision-making. Since bridges are public infrastructure the budget allocated to their repair and maintenance is limited. Therefore, there arises a need for accurate, measurable, reliable, and cost-effective technologies for bridge health monitoring that can be incorporated into decision-making tools to prioritize repair and maintenance strategies. In recent years the trend has shifted from visual inspection to IoT-based condition assessment. This technique evaluates the bridge’s global and localized, and static and dynamic responses. However, there is a need to develop a systematic structure for a bridge health monitoring system, standardizing the data acquisition, processing, and transmission from a group of sensors to evaluate the existing condition of the bridge. This study proposes a conceptual IoT-based framework for structural health monitoring of existing reinforced concrete bridges for informed decision-making along with development of data acquisition system.