Collecting critical bridge performance data that are not available elsewhere and merging them with data gathered from other available sources is no small task. Providing efficient and quick access to data and information has been an even bigger challenge until now. In January 2019, the Federal Highway Administration’s Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) Program released the LTBP InfoBridge™ web portal for dissemination and visualization of data, information, and products it develops. The portal’s main purpose is to leverage the analytical capability of the highway bridge research community, and serve as a means of fulfilling FHWA’s responsibility to provide transparency and ready access to data collected through Federal research programs.
In addition to providing a trove of bridge performance information for use in research studies, InfoBridge enables bridge owners with limited or no access to bridge asset management software to manage their bridge inventories through a seamless user interface that incorporates state-of-the-art querying and visualization tools. Universities that have bridge engineering curricula can also benefit from InfoBridge because it enables students to access a free platform that is extremely data rich and analytics ready. The portal, available at https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov, is cloud-based and does not require user registration or login.
“Our goal at FHWA is to make InfoBridge a comprehensive bridge performance portal, enabling researchers to develop tools and products that will enhance understanding of the performance of highway bridge assets, and enabling anyone interested in bridge performance to easily access and explore the available information,” says Cheryl Richter, Ph.D., P.E., director of the Office of Infrastructure Research and Development at FHWA. “Ultimately, it will lead to more efficient design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, preservation, and management of those assets.”
Goals of the LTBP Program
The LTBP Program is a long-term research effort to help the bridge community better understand bridge performance. The overall objectives of the LTBP Program are to monitor representative samples of bridges nationwide to collect, document, maintain, manage, and disseminate high-quality quantitative performance data over an extended period of time. The program accomplishes this by taking advantage of advanced nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring technologies in addition to traditional visual bridge inspection approaches.
FHWA designed the LTBP Program to collect critical performance data that are not available elsewhere and merge them with data gathered from other available sources. Achieving all its objectives requires the LTBP Program to collaborate closely with State transportation departments, academia, and industry.
The LTBP Program created InfoBridge to provide a user-friendly web portal that includes intuitive tools for finding, viewing, and analyzing bridge performance information. The tool gives users the ability to efficiently share data selections and summary reports.
Read more at FHWA’s A New Home for Bridge Data
