The Nigerian government at all levels has been advised to appreciate the efficacy of Artificial Intelligence technology, which is helping some governments in the areas of roads and bridge construction.
An AI specialist, Mr. Saar Dickman, who gave the advice, believes that with Artificial Intelligence, bridge, tunnel owners and operators can obtain a visual diagnosis of the assets they manage.
He cited New York and Tel Aviv based startup Dynamic Infrastructure, which is implementing the world’s first deep-learning solution, which provides live, cloud-based, 3D views of the bridge or tunnel and automatically alerts when changes are detected in maintenance and operation conditions – before the issues evolve into large-scale failures.
He said Dynamic Infrastructure is already conducting projects in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, Greece and Israel with different transportation infrastructure stakeholders.
“Dynamic Infrastructure quickly creates “medical records” for every bridge, tunnel and elevated highway, based on existing images taken through periodical condition inspections over the years, including images from smartphones, drones and laser scanning. The proprietary technology compares old and archived images to new ones, detecting maintenance and operation issues, defects and anomalies,” he said.
According to him, the diagnostics can be easily accessed through a simple browser and can be instantly shared with peers and contractors to speed maintenance workflows and increase return on investment.
Saar Dickman, who is also the co-founder and CEO of Dynamic Infrastructure, added that the world faces an infrastructure crisis. Thus, 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.
He also argued that trying to repair deficient infrastructure without adopting new technologies will not work. Technology allows you to change the equation of a one-dollar problem that equals one dollar of the solution. A single dollar of the right technology in the right place can save much more than one dollar of maintenance of a bridge.
This AI technology is novel. Till recently, there has been no effective system that can quickly and precisely identify defects in bridges throughout their lifetime. The Dynamic Infrastructure solution provides actionable monitoring and alerts that can better manage expenditures and help prevent the next collapse.