Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Structural Monitoring and Analysis of Bridges
for Emergency Response
Martin Turek, Yavuz Kaya, Carlos Ventura, and Sharlie Huffman
Abstract
The British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and the University of British Columbia have implemented a
program to instrument key structures to provide confirmation of seismic capacity, assist in focusing retrofit efforts, perform
structural health evaluations and provide rapid damage assessment of those structures following a seismic event. The
instrumentation system installed at each structure will automatically process and upload data to a central server via
the Internet. The alert systems and public-access web pages can display real time seismic data from the structures and
from the BC Strong Motion Network to provide input for assessments by the Ministry of non-instrumented bridges. These
systems may also provide other agencies, emergency responders and engineers with situational awareness.
Keywords
Instrumentation • Real-time monitoring • Emergency response • Damage detection • Modal identification
7.1
Introduction
The MoT has been instrumenting structures in collaboration with the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility (EERF) at
the University of British Columbia (UBC) since the late 1990s. The west coast of BC lies in Canada's highest seismic zone, a
as a result, the primary purpose of these original systems was to capture the ground motion input in the event of an
earthquake. More recently, the instrumentation has been expanded to incorporate Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Two
design- build bridges have included instrumentation; one existing bridge has also been instrumented, and up to eight more
bridges will be added to system by the end of 2014.
In addition to the structural monitoring, the Geologic Survey of Canada (GSC) through the Pacific Geosciences Centre
(PGC) maintains the Provincial Strong Motion Network (SMN) comprised of over 130 ground monitoring stations. Over the
last several years the MoT has been working with the PGC expanding the number of stations in the network. Building on
these collaborations, MoT and UBC embarked on a program called the British Columbia Smart Infrastructure Monitoring
System (BCSIMS). The system integrates data from the instrumented structures and strong motion network, organizes and
processes the information in an efficient manner, to deliver that information to the appropriate parties.
The Goals of the System are to: (1) Provide a real-time seismic structural response system to enable rapid deployment and
prioritized inspections of the Ministry's structures; and (2) Develop and implement a health monitoring program to address
the need for safe and cost-effective operation of structures in BC.
