A BIM-based information management pathway for bridge asset management

Abstract

Bridge asset management (BAM) is often complicated by the distributed knowledge across the transport authorities, and this is particularly true for bridge scour. This coupled with the growing concerns about the risks of climate change creates significant uncertainty within the BAM processes. Building Information Modelling (BIM) methods and approaches have proven to be effective digital tools for information and process management for the built environment. However, limited investigations have been done on how BIM could contribute to BAM. This paper maps the information requirements for predicting the progression of bridge scour while considering the impact of climate change. A BIM-based information management technique, leveraging open standards is then employed to structure the information requirements and to create a template, streamlining the information transfer and interoperability. Further research work should be carried out on the data modelling of the information categories missing in the BIM open standards that would better inform risk-based bridge asset management