- [Narrator] With tens of thousands of bridges in Texas,
making sure they are in good condition and remain that way
is a major undertaking.
This project conducted by researchers at the University of
Texas at San Antonio is designed to predict bridge
deterioration over time.
- We have a little over 55,000 bridges in the state,
which is the most out of any state in the country.
We inspect every bridge every 24 months,
which ends up being several hundred bridges per month.
We want to be identifying what kinds of defects or what
kinds of maintenance needs a bridge might exhibit signs of
early. Right?
And we want to do that systematically.
- When you set up a goal that you're going to maintain
your bridges at a certain rating level,
which this is what we're talking about.
Then of course that's going to cost you money. Correct.
Okay. So TxDOT has an acceptable rating level that it has
established for its bridges. Okay.
And of course at this rating level, you want a tool,
that tells you okay,
if I need to maintain it at this rating level,
how much money do I need?
- [Drake Builta] Researchers developed a spreadsheet tool
that's going to be helpful to predict how it might behave
going into the future.
The part that I'm particularly really excited about is
scaling that up and taking these models,
using them within our bridge management system to predict
behavior across the network.
We're going to be able to use that alongside cost modeling,
alongside other configurations within that system,
and we'll be able to, forecast,
funding needs really over the next 10, 20, 50 years.
- [Jose Weissmann] TxDOT is gonna use it
to forecast the amount of money,
because those are questions that are always asked,
how much money you need to
preserve your bridges as a certain
management level. Okay.
So that's where this is going to make a contribution.
- The idea is to be proactive.
We don't want to be reacting to what we see
as much as possible.
And we do have to do that to some degree, but if we can
anticipate how much money is going to be needed,
you know, five, 10 years from now,
we want to be starting to,
to take the kinds of actions that we can to lower that
need in the future.
And also not be surprised
when we do see
conditions across the network change.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.