The safety and security of infrastructure is a major concern, in particular, after recent accidents and detection of severe structural damage in bridges, tunnels, and other critical infrastructure. There is an urgent need to address efficient management of infrastructure, damage prevention, and preparation against disaster, with a long-term perspective. The effectiveness of infrastructure management depends mainly on condition assessment and future performance prediction, which are in principle, based upon visual inspection and design documents. Such evaluations are by and large very effective, although relatively expensive and time consuming. Nonetheless, large uncertainties could remain even after the evaluation.
Therefore, recent technological developments in sensing, non-destructive inspection, simulation, and data processing, are expected to contribute to the enhanced assessment of current and future performance levels of infrastructure. Furthermore, appropriate evaluation of infrastructure quality reveals Japanese technological competence, which could lead to improvement of infrastructure quality and international competitiveness of Japanese industry.
This special issue on infrastructure assessment technology introduces state-of-the-art infrastructure condition evaluation and future performance prediction. In particular, leading-edge technologies which are used in industry are introduced and important characteristics of technologies which contribute to their use in industry are considered. While there are a variety of technologies being studied, only a limited number are actually used in industry. It is hoped that this special issue provides novel ways to consider how technological development in infrastructure evaluation research can lead to more accurate assessment of infrastructure in the real world.