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5. The Technological Imperative
- University Press of New England
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5 The Technological Imperative For a country generally smitten with technology, it is ironic that when it comes to maintaining our nation’s costly infrastructure, technology is noticeably absent. As advanced technology in the form of computer- aided design software and increasingly sophisticated project management software is widely utilized in the construction of roads and bridges, the lack of technology for maintaining our infrastructure comes as something of a surprise. How has this happened? What price is our nation paying as a consequence? Inspection departments are the stepsisters in our state transportation agencies. The exciting work of most transportation agencies is planning, designing, and building the latest and greatest projects. Unlike projects conceived and developed by transportation departments , the ongoing inspection processes of state and local bridges required by federal law garner little, if any, publicity. Because funds are routinely siphoned off to pay for new projects and make up for other funding inefficiencies, engineers and inspectors charged with overseeing this unglamorous inspection work find themselves dealing with a huge backlog of deferred maintenance. To close this gap will require a smarter and more efficient approach to the management of the nation’s infrastructure. This means that transportation agencies will need to acquire efficient and effective real- time data and knowledge resources to monitor and maintain their costly assets. In the construction of buildings, high- tech building management systems that control heat, air conditioning, lighting, and other building systems continue to get smarter. Architects and engineers are incorporating more and more automated smart controls that an owner can utilize to manage a building and meet the changing needs of occupants. Emerging standards now enable data sharing between building systems that improve efficiency as well as provide real- time control over operating costs. There is no reason why we should not be able to convert our infrastructure to serve as smart systems that are 134 Too Big to Fall capable of reporting incipient cracks in critical bridge members, for example, or of identifying the beginnings of potholes in roads, when such problems can be fixed at minimal cost. Bridges are complex machines that must respond to changes in age, loading, and environmental conditions, and there is a significant contrast between the amount of technology used to design and build them and that used to maintain them. When we marvel at the flowing , poetic grace of a bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava, we begin to understand how the latest technological advances have allowed engineers and architects to shape wondrous new structures for our use and enjoyment. However, no bridge remains beautiful or stands forever if it is deprived of the funding needed to keep it aloft. To study the evolution of bridge technology is to learn how advances in the materials used to construct bridges have enabled engineers to design structures that can withstand the geometric increases in traffic volume that have accompanied the growth of the United States over the past fifty years. Yet it is stunning to learn how little technology has been used to maintain the country’s bridge inventory as these structures have aged. Thetransitionof bridgeconstructionfromirontosteelrestedupon the achievement of Andrew Carnegie, who first brought the Bessemer steel process from England to the United States and changed the face of the railroad industry.1 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the strength of steel rails allowed for the expansion of railroads all across the country. Bridge design took advantage of this new technology to replace wood truss, cast iron, and wrought iron bridges with new steel designs. The great bridges of this era included the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis (1874), the Brooklyn Bridge (1883), the first all- steel suspension bridges across the Ohio River at Rochester and Monaca, Pennsylvania (1897), and the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City (1903), whose 1,600- foot span made it, at the time, the longest suspension bridge in the world. Steel arch spans soon followed, as famous bridge engineers such as Othmar H. Ammann, the designer of the George Washington Bridge [44.200.101.170] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:24 GMT) The Technological Imperative 135 across the Hudson River; and Conde B. McCullough, the designer of the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, Oregon, became names of note in the engineering world.2 By the 1960s, concrete, in combination with steel, was producing exciting composite designs. Steel box girders became a common element in the design of bridges such as the 11,179- foot Coronado...