NICTA solution signals bridge safety boost for NSW RTA

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 18 August 2009 09:52

IT Industry - Market

Dr Athanassios Boulis, from NICTA’s networked systems theme who is leading the project, said that although there were approximately 3,500 bridges in NSW the RTA was looking at installing the system on 2-300 bridges initially.

Asked when the lifecycle monitoring programme might begin Mallon acknowledged that “the constraints are funding. This is R&D so it is not easy to get funding.

“We often do things that the Minister and community want and R&D progresses at a slower pace.” Nevertheless he believed that it would be possible to start installing lifecycle monitoring systems on the State’s bridges within three years.

According to Dr Boulis research funding for the project was trickling in. “The RTA is funding this in small instalments of around $40,000 a time, then $60-100,000 for the test.” Dr Boulis expects the project will eventually cost “a few $100,000.”

He said the RTA had earlier this month revealed their costings showed the test bed unit was already “Seven times cheaper than the current system and provides much richer information.”

According to Mallon “This is part of a health monitoring system for bridges. We already look after the electronics to look for terrorists on bridges, such as the Sydney Harbour and Anzac Bridge. We can have a system that will look at the structural and operational issues, like vandalism or terrorism.

“I think we can do that fairly quickly. We have already put in a first intelligent system with the flashing lights in school zones using a central monitoring system on the 3G network.”

While the lifecycle structural monitoring system would be a first for the State, Mallon acknowledged that Australia was playing catch up as “the San Francisco Bridge has already used this technology for a couple of years, and in Hong Kong and Asia they already use lifecycle monitoring.”