The initiative responds to the infrastructure challenge set by the Chilean Ministry of Public Works.
The Chilean Ministry of Public Works (MOP) is currently facing new challenges associated with its infrastructure. The post health crisis revival will force the Ministry to significantly increase its efficiency in order to maximise its capacity to mobilise resources in the country. Furthermore, the global trend indicates that recovery processes should be carried out in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner.
For this reason, last October the MOP launched a challenge aimed at implementing an Infrastructure Network Maintenance Model based on predictive models that integrate artificial intelligence. This will make it possible to detect risks associated with the structural condition of the bridges being monitored at an early stage. The aim is to prioritise the management of network interventions according to criticality. Maintenance operations can be planned earlier and at an earlier stage of wear and tear, resulting in lower maintenance costs, while at the same time increasing the safety of the infrastructure. The bridges targeted by the challenge are located in the lake district in southern Chile, one of the most seismically active areas on the planet.
The Roads Department has data and results obtained from the instrumentation projects carried out to date, both on a one-off and continuous basis. The challenge is to generate a Bridge Conservation Programme from these data.
Further information
IDIEM is the Chilean Research, Development and Innovation Centre for Structures and Materials.
TECNALIA brings its experience in the sectors of infrastructure, asset management and monitoring and diagnosing structures using information technologies. It is also working on developing a prototype Predictive Model for Bridge Maintenance, which is replicable and scalable and can be adapted to the needs of the MOP: it uses existing information with an intelligent and innovative analysis and orchestrates different services, APIs and databases.
The team is made up of Guillermo Sierra, Lenart Gonzalez, Isidora Baeza, Daniela Arellano and Ricardo Flores from IDIEM, and Jesús Isoird, David García-Sánchez, Diego Zamora, and Ana Fernández-Navamuel del Olmo from TECNALIA's SMART AND RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURES Platform.
