Bridges are important infrastructure assets and provide vital road, rail and pedestrian lifelines for the communities they serve. Bridges permit transport across both natural boundaries such as rivers and valleys, and man-made barriers such as roads and rail lines. Bridges also represent points of interdependency between different transport networks, where a single failure can have far reaching social and economic consequences that extend well beyond the bridge itself. The resilience of these transport networks is dependent on the performance of the bridge assets. This book is intended to provide guidance on the monitoring of bridges, with a particular focus on the use of sensor technologies and bridge monitoring systems. It is aimed at a wide audience that includes bridge owners and operators, bridge engineering designers and consultants, civil engineering contractors, monitoring contractors and researchers. This guide presents a structured approach to the use of bridge monitoring systems, covering all stages from inception to decommissioning. The available technologies for bridge monitoring are many and varied with new technologies emerging all the time. This publication does not attempt to cover all possible technologies that may be used in bridge monitoring systems, nor does it seek to recommend any particular technologies as best practice. Nevertheless, the guide does describe some of the sensors and monitoring technologies commonly used on bridges. Many technologies used in bridge monitoring systems are mature and well understood, whilst others are emerging as potentially useful tools for adoption in the future
