The Use of Smart Alternative Transportation Platforms (SATP) in Infrastructure Evaluation and Management

Sustainable rehabilitation and risk management of infrastructure requires continuous, accurate and fit-for-purpose data as the basis of all analyses and decisions. Such data become the digital repository used to describe the existing condition, as well as historical condition (built on an archive of earlier datasets) of the infrastructure. Recent developments in the fields of sensors, autonomous and semi-autonomous platforms provide for a leap in the methodologies and effectiveness in which such data can be collected. This paper evaluates the potential use of Smart Alternative Transportation Platforms (SATPs) as the vehicles used to access infrastructure for data collection. SATPs include aerial (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)), terrestrial (quadrupedal and wheeled robots) and aquatic (surface and submersible) platforms. These platforms typically incorporate various levels of autonomy, but the primary reasons for application as infrastructure data collection platforms are the ability to reach areas of difficult access, operations in unsafe and small areas and conducting repetitive data collection tasks. Through the combination of the SATPs with sensor networks (incorporating LoraWAN, LiDAR, and related technologies) an infrastructure data collection methodology can be developed that provides for a safe, sustainable, continuous process of collecting current digital infrastructure data (including ambient environmental conditions, images at a range of wavelengths, etc.) that may form the basis of infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation and risk management decisions. In the paper the potential and proven applications of such SATPs are discussed.