Innovative Life-Cycle Inspection Strategy of Civil Infrastructure: Smartphone-Based Public Participation

Abstract

The life-cycle inspection of civil infrastructure can guide decisions on structural safety and reliability. This paper proposes a strategy for smartphone-based public participation in the life-cycle inspection of civil infrastructure (SPIC). The SPIC strategy consists of three parts: participants, Urban Brain, and Global View. Next, the feasibility of this strategy is verified by simulation experiments implemented in Unity3D. Civil infrastructure inspection modes include routine inspection, focus inspection, and emergency inspection. The activation and transition of the three inspection modes are tested. Test results show that routine inspection with public participation could timely identify pre-set damaged civil infrastructures. All abnormal civil infrastructures are observed by the Urban Brain. The focus inspection mode is activated when an abnormal civil infrastructure is detected, and the focus inspection provides a detailed and professional assessment of the abnormal civil infrastructure. Then, the inspection of all civil infrastructures in emergency inspection mode is completed in the test. Furthermore, this paper carries out a factor sensitivity analysis of this strategy. The proposed strategy establishes the mechanism for the assign-accept-feedback inspection task. In addition, the simulation performed in Unity3D is one of the next alternatives for large-scale urban disaster prevention and mitigation experiments in the real world. The SPIC strategy can effectively enhance the disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities of civil infrastructure.

Smartphone Prospects in Bridge Structural Health Monitoring, a Literature Review

“…In our opinion, crowdsourcing requires a transformative approach where most of the sensor technologies are not known by society. With the right incentives, public participants can be trained to take on a role in post-disaster scenarios and inspect infrastructure conditions at regional levels [ 151 ]. Experimentation and learning via smartphone sensor technologies necessitate a structured educational approach, and its role can reshape the civil engineering curriculum, while preparing tomorrow’s crowdsourcers.…”