Mobile Model-Based Bridge Lifecycle Management System

: This article discusses the requirements for developing a mobile model‐based bridge lifecycle management system (MMBLMS). This new system should link all the information about the lifecycle stages of a bridge (e.g., design, construction, inspection, and maintenance) to a 4D model of the bridge incorporating different scales of space and time to record events throughout the lifecycle with suitable levels of details (LoDs). In addition, MMBLMS should support distributed databases and mobile location‐based computing by providing user interfaces that can be used on mobile computers, such as tablet PCs. A framework for MMBLMS is described and the basic computational issues for realizing it are discussed including the navigation modes, the picking behavior and the LoDs for representing bridge elements and defects. A prototype system developed in Java language is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed methodology for realizing this system.