The advancement of key aspects of bridge information modeling for software interoperability and data exchange has attracted increasing interest from various stakeholders in the bridge industry. Potential benefits include reductions in project delivery time, errors, and cost. However, a lack of standardized data exchange protocols hinders the development and deployment of such modeling. This situation causes the still-all-too-fragmented bridge industry to waste a large amount of money each year. The research presented in this paper was motivated by the advantages of using interoperability to streamline the approaches used to deliver concrete bridge projects. Every bridge project requires frequent communication; without improved software interoperability, projects can become bogged down with requests for information. This paper develops, demonstrates, and implements key aspects of interoperable data schema protocols that can be used to facilitate the exchange of bridge information in the planning, design, detailing, fabrication, and construction phases of concrete bridge projects. These protocols will be public domain and software neutral with their implementation being considered in various bridge software applications.
The benefits of using building information modeling to integrate the project delivery process by exchange of project data between industry stakeholders stimulate the bridge industry to develop bridge information modeling. However, the existing data exchange methods, formats, and standards that are used by the building industry cannot be directly borrowed and used “as is” for bridge projects. Bridge projects involve specific definitions of structural geometry (e.g., roadway alignment–driven bridge layout) or definitions of bridge member geometry that are not usually used in building projects (e.g., camber data for steel plate girders). These bridge-oriented geometries cannot be described by using current building-oriented data exchange formats. Because bridge geometry depends on the geometry of the roadway carried by the bridge, it is beneficial to define a bridge as a parametric model that can be manipulated by modifying a manageably small number of independent parameters (e.g., station and skew). However, the existing data exchange standards do not support the exchange of parametric geometry. To overcome these technical limitations, this paper presents a software-neutral schema for the exchange of alignment-driven bridge-oriented parametric geometry data using eXtensible Markup Language. The application of this formalism is then illustrated via three high-priority use cases that occur during the steel bridge life cycle.
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