Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Transport infrastructure plays a vital role in our economic and social development and needs to grow and function safely with the growing population of Canada. Unfortunately, most bridges in Canada were built in the post-World War II era and are approaching the end of their service life. Recent examples such as the Nipigon River Bridge, the Montreal River Bridge, and the decommissioning of the original Champlain Bridge in Montreal have further highlighted the vulnerabilities of bridges and thus, the consequences for public safety and security in Canada. Due to extreme weather and increasing traffic, Canadian bridges suffer from several safety issues, such as anomalies in measurements, hidden damage, and recurring overloads. However, traditional damage assessment techniques face significant implementation challenges, including prolonged bridge closures, the need to install many sensors, the need to acquire several high-quality images from inaccessible areas of the structure, and the error-prone subjective decision-making of inspectors. The proposed Canada Research Chair (CRC) program aims to develop a mobile and autonomous smart Bridge Health Monitoring (BHM) system to detect immediate safety risks and prolong the life of Canadian public transport infrastructure, thus minimizing expensive replacement and decommissioning of existing bridges. The novelty of this research is in cost-effective surveillance and decision-making of existing bridges’ condition and their traffic by harnessing modern sensors (e.g., ground robots and highspeed cameras) through Dr. Ayan Sadhu’s cutting-edge BHM laboratory, Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) laboratory, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. This CRC program will revolutionize how Canadian bridge infrastructure is assessed and renewed through mobile and autonomous structural inspection. This would involve (i) addressing the challenges of vehicle-sensor-structure interaction in autonomous mobile sensors and developing guidelines for a test vehicle, and (ii) developing a newer class of AI techniques and data fusion methods that can provide accurate damage assessment, with even fewer images and video data. The ultimate goal of this CRC program is to change the paradigm of bridge assessment and decision-making, improve its autonomy, reduce its economic burden, limit the social burden of bridge closures and catastrophic incidents, and eliminate the health impact of bridge collapses on our citizens.