Bridge Rapid Assessment Center for Extreme Events

Through the PEER-Bridge Program, Caltrans is contracting with UC Berkeley to develop the Bridge Rapid Assessment Center for Extreme Events (BRACE2), a trial implementation center that will monitor the Hayward 580/238 Separation bridge 24/7.

Under this task, communication and processing infrastructure will be established that enables monitoring in real-time. State-of-the-art structural models will be developed for the trial bridge and will be used to develop simpler fragility algorithms that can provide damage estimates in real-time. These estimates will be provided to Caltrans via a limited access web site to support decision-making regarding bridge closure and inspection. Efficient updating of bridge models using recorded sensor data will also be developed. Another objective of the task is to estimate structural responses and fine tune modeling parameters of 4 other existing bridges using historic sensor data. The goal of the study is to capture varies influence parameters critical to bridge responses from recorded data. The platform is built on the infrastructure resilience engine, IRiE, and is hosted at https://structures.live.

More information about the project can be found in the following:

Also see a related article on “Smart Bridges, Evolved” that appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine.

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