The Institute of Transportation has developed a bridge safety warning system that would give highway authority officials as much as three hours to react to emergency situations.
The institute is a research agency that assists the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in developing transportation policies.
The institute spent about a year developing the system, Chiu Yung-fang (邱永芳), division director of the institute’s harbor and marine technology center, said at the launch yesterday.
Photo: Tung Chen-kuo, Taipei Times
“We have tried to combine different simulation systems into one,” Chiu said. “In particular, we have incorporated the operating system used to gauge water levels in the dams located on the upper stream of rivers because the rainfall collected in the dams affects water levels in the middle and lower parts of the river.”
Chiu said the system was designed based on the fact that water levels in the nation’s rivers fluctuate drastically between the wet and dry seasons.
According to Chiu, the system was developed using the bridges in the basin of the Dajia River (大甲溪), which mainly runs through Greater Taichung.
The system shows the status at individual bridges using a three-color scale: green for safe, yellow for alert and red for action.
“The system will show the status at each of the bridges an hour from now, two hours from now and three hours from now, and the status will be updated based on the latest information gathered,” Chiu said.
“When highway authorities see any change in the status, they can dispatch personnel to monitor the situation on the spot and decide whether they should shut down the bridge immediately.”
Chiu said the institute would conduct a system test in August in Taichung using weather information collected when Typhoon Morakot hit the country in 2009.
He added that the system would not be officially available for use by highway authorities and disaster-prevention agencies during the typhoon season for at least another year.
“We have just completed the system,” he said. “It would take two to three years to verify and validate the system’s operation before it can be proven to be reliable.”
Aside from the Dajia River, Chiu said the system would also include bridges in other large rivers in the country.
Meanwhile, Chiu said the nation’s first laboratory for the bridge-scouring experiments would be established in Wuci (梧棲) in Greater Taichung on Thursday, allowing scientists to analyze the bridge-scouring process and find effective ways to protect the bridge piers.
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