Design and Implementation of a New System for Large Bridge Monitoring—GeoSHM

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a relatively new branch of civil engineering that focuses on assessing the health status of infrastructure, such as long-span bridges. Using a broad range of in-situ monitoring instruments, the purpose of the SHM is to help engineers understand the behaviour of structures, ensuring their structural integrity and the safety of the public. Under the Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) scheme of the European Space Agency (ESA), a feasibility study (FS) project that used the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Earth Observation (EO) for Structural Health Monitoring of Long-span Bridges (GeoSHM) was initiated in 2013. The GeoSHM FS Project was led by University of Nottingham and the Forth Road Bridge (Scotland, UK), which is a 2.5 km long suspension bridge across the Firth of Forth connecting Edinburgh and the Northern part of Scotland, was selected as the test structure for the GeoSHM FS project. Initial results have shown the significant potential of the GNSS and EO technologies. With these successes, the FS project was further extended to the demonstration stage, which is called the GeoSHM Demo project where two other long-span bridges in China were included as test structures. Led by UbiPOS UK Ltd. (Nottingham, UK), a Nottingham Hi-tech company, this stage focuses on addressing limitations identified during the feasibility study and developing an innovative data strategy to process, store, and interpret monitoring data. This paper will present an overview of the motivation and challenges of the GeoSHM Demo Project, a description of the software and hardware architecture and a discussion of some primary results that were obtained in the last three years.

Global Navigation Satellite System‐based positioning technology for structural health monitoring: a review

“…Funded by the European Space Agency, Meng et al developed a system, called GNSS and Earth Observation for Structural Health Monitoring (GeoSHM; Figure ). GeoSHM was employed to monitor the dynamic deformations of the main structures of the Forth Road Bridge.…”

“…GeoSHM web application for the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland . RT, real time; SHM, structural health monitoring…”

“…Meanwhile, its dynamic measurement accuracy is also significantly improved with measurement accuracies of 20 and 10 mm in the vertical and horizontal directions, respectively, in last two decades . Some GNSS‐based monitoring systems have been successfully established and applied in SHM of the long‐span bridges, towers, chimneys, and high‐rise buildings . Nevertheless, many researches have been conducted to improve the GNSS measurement accuracy due to the limitation of ephemeris error, ionospheric error, tropospheric errors, multipath error, receiver measurement noise, and so forth .…”

“…14 Some GNSS-based monitoring systems have been successfully established and applied in SHM of the long-span bridges, towers, chimneys, and high-rise buildings. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Nevertheless, many researches have been conducted to improve the GNSS measurement accuracy due to the limitation of ephemeris error, ionospheric error, tropospheric errors, multipath error, receiver measurement noise, and so forth. 22 Many data acquiring and processing techniques have emphatically been developed to reduce the measurement cost and improve measurement accuracy in structural dynamic monitoring.…”

“…GeoSHM web application for the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland 18. RT, real time; SHM, structural health monitoring GNSS, and Robotic Total Station (RTS) integration, GNSS and pseudo-satellite system integration, GNSS multi-antenna system, and single-frequency receiver monitoring system.…”