BIM‐based immersive meetings for optimized maintenance management of bridge structures

Along the long service life of the approximately 65,000 bridges in Germany of more than 50 years, it requires the execution of many meetings under the participation of many different parties. These meetings are still location‐bound and run very manually using analog inventory documentation. For an optimization, further digitization as well as dissolution of the location dependency at the structure, immersive technologies can be used in connection with digital twins of bridge structures. This article presents an approach for a location‐independent meeting at the bridge structure under the integration and possibility of interaction of all actors and linking of the digital and physical world. A digital building model of the bridge serves as the data basis and immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality as the output and interaction technology. In the first section, the status quo is elaborated based on a literature review. This is followed by the presentation of the theoretical concept. In the next step, the concept is implemented and validated by using a real bridge demonstrator. Finally, further development possibilities as well as still existing challenges are derived. The result of the article shows a concept and the first feasibility of location‐independent meetings in the maintenance management of a bridge by merging the following elements.