Net based reasoning informatics for civil infrastructure monitoring

The informatics of instrumented infrasiructure will require multi-level computational abstractions that not only collect and declutter the data but also support higher-level automated reasoning capabilities relevant to decision support needs of both owners responsible for the safe operation of the facilities and users of those facilities. This paper describes the appeal and implemented demonstration of Internet-based paradigms for higher-level automated reasoning about condition of instrumented infrastructure using the Java computing language. This enables interactive program execution from a web page. These notions are presented and demonstrated in the context of illustrative application scenarios involving fatigue monitoring, overweight vehicle detection, and bridge deck surface travel condition monitoring. By means of this demonstration, it is suggested that there is an important role for Java-based expert systems in handling key aspects of the data fusion requirements associated with intelligent, internet-mediated post-processing of data obtained from instrumented civil infrastructure.