Background 

In the management of infrastructures - such as bridges - there are conflicting requirements: Infrastructure facilities need to meet stringent safety standards but should be economically efficient at the same time. Particularly in the case of railway bridges, interruptions to operations during maintenance and renewal measures can cause delays and/or cancellations. Delayed decisions for maintenance measures can in turn have serious consequences, in the worst case leading to  the collapse of bridges. On the other hand, maintenance measures that are carried out before the reliability limit is reached can cause unnecessary financial strain. 
Regular bridge inspections are a prerequisite for being able to make statements about the current performance of a bridge. One of the most frequently used methods for monitoring is visual inspection. For both cost and technical reasons, this will not change in the near future. 

Project content

In the project, an application for "integrated bridge inspection" for use with tablets or smartphones is being developed. During a bridge inspection defective areas are recorded and the data is transmitted to a central location. The application allows for immediate data entry, in situ analysis and reproduction of historical data.  The completeness and feasibility of the app is checked and optimized in the laboratory.  

Methodology 

• Surveying the requirements for the application with the involvement of the future users 
• Developing and testing the application using modern technology devices (tablets, smartphones) 
• Checking completeness and feasibility of the application and its optimization.Results 
• Increase of safety, prevention of accidents by timely maintenance of bridges.
• Increasing the quality of decisions on maintenance measures through integrated data collection and transmission of this data to a central office and data analysis.
• More precise statements about the condition of the bridges.