Scour Alerts Tell Bridge Inspectors Where To Go 4/26/2004
Transportation engineers monitoring bridges at risk during flood situations are getting a helping hand with locally focused weather forecasting, Web bots that troll automatically for targeted information and software that assesses the data to send alerts when preset conditions are met.
"Its helping us get out of the barn faster," says Peter Weykamp, bridge maintenance program engineer with the New York State Dept. of Transportation. Because of improved forecasting, engineers can concentrate on specific bridges and water courses instead of whole counties during floods. With the automatic notification systems, everyone who should be advised receives the alerts as they go out.