Are they answering any important questions or just collecting data for data sake hoping something will be useful. Seems like this bridge was long identified as being at risk but simply never addressed. We don’t need novel techniques to make that assessment. At best they might be able to show a bridge is more at risk of failure but then what? The federal government only funds collapsed bridges so you need to collapse it or the local government will have to find it out of a non existent funding source.
The interesting part of the idea seems to be the automatic creation of a 3d model from what I would guess to be photogrammetric techniques based on data from ground penetrating radar and also normal radar (radar is an interesting one I would have expected lidar).
But you're right - the government inspected the bridges often enough to understand they were in poor condition, and even if these guys give their scans of a bridge to an engineer, that engineer is still going to need to visit the site to visually inspect, see corrosion, etc.
If they can make a 3d model that includes the interior of concrete then maybe engineers will be able to estimate the cost of remediation or the urgency of repair a lot better than they do currently, but that's not guaranteed or demonstrated in the article.
The city doesn't have the budget for repairs on all its bridges like the article seems to think. The state doesn't have the budget to repair all of its bridges at once either. They both inspect the structures so they can prioritize the work based on the budget received. I doubt there were any engineers who believed the bridge was going to collapse, but maybe more in depth scans would have revealed something that would have changed their minds.
They want to (FTA) “secure partnerships with transportation and city officials to address repairs needed on all the bridges in the city — not just the poorly rated ones.”.
It’s a Y-Combinator startup, so I doubt they will lose that out of sight, as it seems the primary way to monetize this kind of data. On the other hand, they may pivot.
The city literally can't afford to repair all the bridges, and already pays qualified people to go inspect them on a regular schedule. Depending on what sort of usefulness they do show the diagnostic/imaging materials to have, perhaps the city might request scans of specific bridges, but I don't think they'd pay for scans of high rated bridges just because they're available.
Obviously not the same level of detail, but there's a dataset from the Federal Highway Administration that has basic data (at least what's available publicly) on many bridges and their condition.
