ABSTRACT
Existing bridges are prone to different load action and exposure condition, which can alter their conditions and which could lead potentially to damages. Damages like cracks or spalling can affect the structures’ durability and could reduce its service life. Consequently, Building Information Modelling (BIM) should continuously consider these changes in order to be able to assess the overall conditions of bridges or their components and to estimate their remaining service life at any point in time. Up to today, BIM is primarily a tool to supervise the design and construction phase and it requires further improvement to explore its potential for the operation phase of existing structures. A first step in this direction is the representation of damages in BIM, which ranges from linking photos or documents to fully integration of alphanumerical and geometric information. This contribution compiles and discusses the advantages and drawbacks of the existing approaches of damage integration in BIM and provides further guidance to use the knowledge on existing damages for the object-orientated damage analysis and the condition-based inspection planning.
