Dynamic Infrastructure — a New York and Tel Aviv-based startup — announced this week that it would apply the world’s first artificial intelligence solution for bridge and tunnel owners and operators, to give them live visuals of their property.
Their visuals include cloud-based, 3D views of bridges and tunnels. These images are paired with automatic alerts as soon as changes are detected in operating and maintenance conditions, to give operators warnings in advance of full-fledged problems.
“The world faces an infrastructure crisis,” Saar Dickman, co-founder and CEO of Dynamic Infrastructure, said. “Specifically, deficient bridges and tunnels represent a severe infrastructure challenge in the US and worldwide, and their poor condition leads to life losses and millions in unplanned expenditures. Trying to repair America’s deficient infrastructure without adopting new technologies will not work. Technology allows you to change the equation of one-dollar problem equals one dollar of solution. A single dollar of the right technology in the right place can save much more than one dollar of maintenance of a bridge.”
The new technology works like this: records of bridges, tunnels, and elevated highways are formed through existing images, then old and archived images are compared to new ones. In this comparison, maintenance and operation issues, defects, and abnormalities surface, forming a baseline for the company to issue future condition alerts.
“Till recently, there has been no effective system that can quickly and precisely identify defects in bridges throughout their lifetime,” Dickman said. “We provide actionable monitoring and alerts that can better manage expenditures and help prevent the next collapse.”
The company believes that its system is critical for day to day maintenance and operations due to the slow rate of repair in the United States, along with the significant backlog of deficient structures.