On longevity and monitoring technologies of bridges: a survey study by the Japanese Society of Steel Construction

The Japanese Society of Steel Construction (JSSC) had organised a special task committee and conducted a study on the recent development of maintenance, renewal and retrofitting for buildings and bridges of Japan. This paper describes the outline of the study by the working group of bridges and consists of two parts. The first part is concerned with the survey on the recent developments of technologies for the longevity of bridges, whereas the second part is specifically concerned with the structural health monitoring technologies. In view of the fact that important terminologies such as lifetime and service life differ considerably throughout the world, some fundamental terminologies are reviewed, discussed and redefined in this paper on a unified viewpoint. Furthermore, recent developments on the structural health monitoring technology are also reviewed and the results are summarised in a matrix form.