Victoria is to partner with a global technology company to remotely monitor the structural health of the State’s bridges to keep traffic and trains moving.
Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Jacinta Allan said the joint venture with US company Xerox would see the development of new technology following trials carried out through a partnership between VicTrack and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre.
Ms Allan said the successful trials developed sensors that could be used to monitor structural health in bridges.
“[The State will] roll out the new technology on priority bridges across Victoria, through a new commercial company called Eloque,” Ms Allan said.
“[The technology] enables remote real-time monitoring – meaning a small problem could be identified before it becomes a big costly problem that causes unnecessary delays to Victorians,” she said.
“This will help to detect problems earlier, reduce delays caused by road closures for manual inspections and repairs, and help to find problems more quickly and accurately in the case of bridge strikes or other unexpected events.”
Ms Allan said the technology used tiny fibre optic connected sensors attached to the bridge to accurately measure and estimate structural strain; thermal response; bending; loads; vibration; and corrosion.
“It enables any problems to be detected that are not visible to the naked eye or may not show up in manual inspections,” the Minister said.
“It also allows maintenance budgets to be better prioritised and targeted to the bridges that need it the most, making maintenance more efficient and less time consuming.”
She said the technology had the potential to be used on any structure that required maintenance, including roads, multi-storey car parks, tunnels and ports.
Ms Allan said it would be progressively rolled out on priority bridges, particularly those that regularly dealt with heavy loads and were at the most risk of deterioration.
