ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Advances in information technologies have enabled new approaches to collecting and managing data throughout the life cycle of civil infrastructure systems, such as bridges, highways, mission-critical buildings, and tunnels. Inspections are often conducted to monitor the health of these structures to ensure the safety of residents or general public who utilize the systems. Inspections often involve both intrusive and non-intrusive procedures to evaluate conditions and maintenance needs. Due to budget and resource constraints, most municipal, state, or federal agencies can only conduct periodic inspections subject to available personnel, resources, and budget. As a result, many problems that could have been detected and repaired cost effectively end up as major costly rehabilitation. New technological advances, especially in sensors, mobile computing, 3-D laser scanning, and wireless communications, provide a unique opportunity to rethink the paradigm of infrastructure inspections and how to collect more accurate data for decision making. This paper presents three research projects that utilize these new technologies. The first project explores the use of mobile and wireless technologies for construction inspection tasks, the second project utilizes 3-D laser scanning technologies to accurately document construction progress and as-built data, and the third project develops a building blackbox system to monitor a structure and support emergency response during manmade or natural disasters.
