Early Monitoring of Diseases and Disasters of Bridges and Tunnels

Assessment of health and safety is crucial in the management of bridges and tunnels structures throughout their life cycle. Diseases and disasters are the main factors leading to the deterioration of these structures. The extensive adoption of structural health monitoring techniques and damage identification theories involved development which bringing effective assessment indicators in maintaining the continuous performance of existing bridges and tunnels structures. To sustain and preserve structural performance and function, it is essential to conduct pathology informatics of early diseases and disasters with early damage monitoring and identification during the lifetime of its structures. Therefore, through various critical literature, this paper aims to investigate the objective, challenges, latest advances and future trends in utilizing early damage monitoring and identification techniques. Then, according to the technical requirements of the precise early monitoring of structural diseases and disasters, an area-wise distributed monitoring based early monitoring methodology, as well as the related sensing technologies, damage identification and assessment theories, are introduced. Meanwhile, the typical monitoring system of large bridge and tunnel structures are conducted, and so as pathological analysis and solutions of early monitoring of cable breakage, bridge scour, local damages, and convergence deformation of tunnel, are elaborated in details.