Emerging Trends in Bridge Information Modelling: A Review Article

Information modelling concept is as old as personnel computing era. This concept is widely adopted in building infrastructure and oil and gas industry. Few proprietary software tools are available in market in the name of building information modelling (BIM), but for bridges, very less work is done for such information modelling. This is a review paper showing status of bridge information modelling (BrIM) in life cycle analysis of bridges which includes all the phases from conceptual planning to maintenance. Emerging trends such as bridge health monitoring and digitalization of existing bridge data are also included. The use of potential future technology for automation of structural analysis and design of bridge structures (by adopting existing big data and with global optimisation) is explored. At the end of the paper, merits and demerits and future technologies in bridge information modelling are discussed.