Development of 'Voices of Bridges' for Infrastructure Management

12 pages•Published: August 28, 2025

Yota Chinen, Kei Kawamura and Shuji Sawamura

Abstract

In Yamaguchi Prefecture, periodic inspections of social infrastructure facilities, such as bridges, have become mandatory every five years due to revisions to the Road Act. However, a significant challenge arises from the lack of personnel available to conduct these inspections, especially in rural municipalities. This shortage of staff, combined with the rapid aging of infrastructure, has heightened the risk of accidents and disasters. This paper introduces the "Voices of Bridges" (VoB) system, which leverages citizen participation to address bridge maintenance through a user-friendly, interactive platform. The system's architecture integrates modern web technologies such as Node.js, MySQL, and Google Maps API to allow efficient data handling and visualization. By utilizing open data from Yamaguchi Prefecture and employing crowdsourcing techniques, VoB enables users to report bridge defects while simultaneously augmenting the efforts of local governments in maintaining infrastructure through community engagement.

Keyphrases: bridge inspection, citizen participation, crowdsourcing, infrastructure maintenance, open data

In: Jack Cheng and Yu Yantao (editors). Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics, vol 22, pages 259-270.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/1ftG
	https://doi.org/10.29007/4f3c

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ICCBEI2025:Development_Voices_Bridges_Infrastructure,
  author    = {Yota Chinen and Kei Kawamura and Shuji Sawamura},
  title     = {Development of 'Voices of Bridges' for Infrastructure Management},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics},
  editor    = {Jack Cheng and Yu Yantao},
  series    = {Kalpa Publications in Computing},
  volume    = {22},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2515-1762},
  url       = {/publications/paper/1ftG},
  doi       = {10.29007/4f3c},
  pages     = {259-270},
  year      = {2025}}

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