Bridge Management Systems

The management and conservation of bridges in a transportation network is a duty that every concessionaire, both public and private, has to fulfil in compliance with the various regulations on the subject. It is therefore vital to manage and store the information about these structures in order to devote the available budget to the most deficient ones.

Figure 1. Three possible strategies.

But the fact is that the most used Bridge Management Systems (BMS) typically rely on closed source modules that are difficult to customize for special bridges and advanced evaluation methodologies. Furthermore, it is difficult, when not impossible, to extend such systems to incorporate the latest information technology for applications such as bridge health monitoring. Probably one of the most popular closed BMS is Pontis that can be purchased at $30.000/license.

Figure 2. BMS developed by 4emme (Italy)

On the other side, Oregon Department of Transportation and Prof. Michael H. Scott are developing an Open BMS since October 2007. The open system will be able to utilize finite element model updating strategies for state-of-the-art applications in reliability-based bridge rating. The result is expected to be released next October.
If someone from the Administration reads this blog, please never ask for close BMS because does not ensure free competition.

Related: Pontes e preocupações relativas (António Aguiar).

Expo-08: Work in progress (II)

First of all, a bit of self-propaganda. Here you have the 3rd Millenium bridge and the author of this blog. I was fascinated by the quality of the materials and the carefulness put into every single detail of this complex work.

Secondly, the extremely realistic wind model tested by Western Ontario Univ. (Canada) and University of Granada (Spain).

Guillermo Capellán -left and with long hair under the helmet- leading the on-site work and proving that he has become one of the most prominent mid-age structural engineers in our days.
And last but not least, the Bridge Pavilion seen from under the 3rd Millenium Bridge. Its metal structure was defined as a huge and expensive piece of junk by a colleague of mine.
It seems they are running behind schedule but they hope to finish in time.

On 14th June the Expo opens. No delays allowed.

Related:

• Expo-08: Work in progress (I)
• Arenas vs Hadid controversy

Benchmarking virtual campuses

After visiting three on-line campus in my longlife learning process I made the following comparison:


a) UNESCO - Delft (by Edumedia)

- Designed only for Internet Explorer users.
- Participants do not need to have any particular software on their computers for using the learning system and taking modules.
- 100% multimedia slides are offered in nearly all the modules.
- Lecturers can be reached by e-mail, phone and Skype and they use to be kind and patient.
- Colours of the learning environment are nice and everything seems easy to find.
- Continuous evaluation.


b) UNED - Spanish Open Univ. (by Webcat)

- Mainly thought for Internet Explorer users but Firefox can be used in most of the cases.
- Most of the teaching material is under HTML/PDF format but traditional books are still the main source of information.
- Very little multimedia materials (mp3 and videos) are offered.
- Professors can be contacted by e-mail and phone, but it is not an easy task to get their attention.
- Nice colours and fonts of the learning environment.
- Interaction among students is frequent but there is very little (or no) dialogue between students and lecturers at the fora.
- Some items (tests, examinations, downloadable software, etc...) are difficult to be found.
- Continuous evaluation is rare. Lots of tests and former exams are offered for self-evaluation.


c) UPM - Technical Univ. of Madrid (by Moodle)

- Given that platform is W3C compliant, it is fully independent of the browser of the student.
- The students need to have MS Office, AutoCAD or similar software to run some educational materials.
- The courses do not offer 100% multimedia materials. The course is great for deaf people!!!
- Lecturers can be reached by e-mail and fora easily and at any time.
- Combination of colours is a bit boring, some items are difficult to find and participation of the students is not fully encouraged.
- Continuous assesment.

Related: Benvic project

Inspirational quote of the day

Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

Bruce Mau's incomplete manifesto

Digital democracy only for Internet Explorer

I am not a fanatic of open source software but I use Mozilla Firefox web browser for my daily net surfing because it is an easily extensible navigator. You can download and install extensions which add the features you want.

Firefox, unlike Internet Explorer, is a more or less standard-compliant browser and one of the first things you are likely to discover is a small bunch of poorly designed sites which refuse to let you in because you are not using IE. One of these pages is the electronic voting web of the Spanish Institution of Civil Engineers (Colegio de Ing. de Caminos). The original idea - choosing the President of the Colegio on-line - was brilliant but badly implemented: a quarter of the civil engineers do not use IE and we will not able to e-vote without using some trick. What is more antidemocratic, it was assumed that we all should use IE in such important elections.

You need Internet Explorer otherwise you cannot vote electronically

The only solution I have found was to set up an add-on called User Agent Switcher, which is like using IE embedded in Firefox. No doubt, I will complain loudly to the Colegio about being discrinated for not using IE and I hope they will begin to pay attention to most of the web standards.