Bridge maintenance with Veesus Arena4D

In Japan, bridges longer than 2 m must be inspected every five years. There are more than 730,000 bridges in Japan over 2 m long, of which 540,000 are less than 15 m long. After each bridge inspection, damage diagrams and photographs are taken, the strength of each bridge section is assessed, and documented in a report. However, the following difficulties arise when preparing these reports:

• 2D documentation has limited ability to describe all damage conditions, so important details can easily be overlooked.
• Damage diagrams created using 2D CAD or sketches do not accurately reflect the structure's shape and damage condition and are therefore not realistic.
• It is not possible to capture the full picture of the damage and its changes over time, as the progression of the damage can only be confirmed by comparing the few photographs in the historical records with the actual visual inspection on site.

Bridge maintenance management requires collected information, such as previous inspection results, technical data of the objects, repair work reports, etc. Although this information is usually managed in bridge logbooks, inspection reports, repair and reinforcement plans, etc., these documents are often kept separately for each year. Therefore, it is not easy to centralize this information.

Infrastructure Renewal Engineering Co. became aware of Arena4D and its ability to process massive amounts of point cloud data, viewing it as a tool that could solve the problems of traditional bridge maintenance methods. 

Jimenez April Rose, the engineer responsible for Arena4D at IRE, says, "We were dissatisfied with the current maintenance methods for conducting measurements and planning repair work on the aging structures and felt it was important to present the information for maintenance management in a new form, not just in a 2D documentation report." 

Although various measurement devices and technologies for capturing 3D infrastructure data are available on the Japanese market, there are virtually no tools that support 3D data in large quantities and in multiple formats. 

The ability to use a variety of 2D and 3D data in addition to point cloud data allows us to consolidate multiple pieces of information for each bridge that were previously scattered by year and location. 

Arena4D's 3D data is of such high quality that one would think the real bridge was projected directly onto the computer. The quality is so high that it's almost as if you were there, and you even feel like you can inspect the bridge as it is! 

Photos taken during the inspection and comments on damage can be added to the 3D data. Information on the amount of damage required for repair work can be linked to spreadsheets to increase the information value of the inspection. These are the advantages of 3D reports over 2D documents. 

Veesus Arena4D enables the consolidation of maintenance and management information for the entire bridge by adding various data and information based on the point cloud data, which is useful for future inspection and repair work. 

It is also a very useful tool for creating 3D animations and presenting data at the highest level.