Infrastructure monitoring for damage assessment from sensors on-board vehicles

Globally, infrastructure is a vital asset for economic prosperity. However, condition assessments to ensure the continued safe operation of these assets tend to be subjective and infrequent. We are developing a low-cost, objective method to continuously monitor roads, railways and other transportation structures from the vibrations recorded on-board a passing vehicle as a complement to traditional inspection techniques. This constitutes a challenging inverse problem given the coupling between the vehicle and the structure dynamics. Our long-term objective is to provide accurate, rapid and nearly continuous assessments of these structures as cost-efficiently as possible.