China bridge collapse toll rises to seven

Xinhua: The death toll from a bridge collapse in south China's Guangdong Province rose to seven after two seriously injured people died in hospital, said an official. The stone arch bridge in Liangkengkou village, Gaozhou City collapsed at 1 p.m. Saturday, said a publicity official of Gaozhou.

More than 300 rescuers pulled 26 people out of the debris, with five of them dead and eight others seriously injured. The rescue operation ended late night Saturday after an investigation showed no more people were buried.

The unlicensed bridge was being built by the village itself. The local government ordered to suspend the project in April, but its construction resumed covertly during the past Worker's Day holiday, said the official. The construction contractor is under police custody....

An adminstrative map (in French) of Guangdong Province, image by Densité_Guangdong_2006.svg, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

US roads, airports unready for extreme weather

Joan Lowy in the San Francisco Chronicle via the Associated Press: The nation's lifelines — its roads, airports, railways and transit systems — are getting hammered by extreme weather beyond what their builders imagined, leaving states and cities searching for ways to brace for more catastrophes like Superstorm Sandy.

Even as they prepare for a new normal of intense rain, historic floods and record heat waves, some transportation planners find it too politically sensitive to say aloud the source of their weather worries: climate change.

Political differences are on the minds of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, whose advice on the design and maintenance of roads and bridges is closely followed by states. The association recently changed the name of its Climate Change Steering Committee to the less controversial Sustainable Transportation, Energy Infrastructure and Climate Solutions Steering Committee.

Still, there is a recognition that the association's guidance will need to be updated to reflect the new realities of global warming. "There is a whole series of standards that are going to have to be revisited in light of the change in climate that is coming at us," said John Horsley, the association's executive director.

In the latest and most severe example, Superstorm Sandy inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history, halted Amtrak and commuter train service to the city for days, and forced cancellation of thousands of airline flights at airports in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia....

Tail nicked by the wind.... The Space Shuttle Enterprise damaged, at the aircraft carrier Enterprise, not far from the old headquarters of Carbon Based, shot by or Rondiel, Wikiimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Averting bridge disasters with new technology that could save hundreds of lives

University of Maryland News Desk: Millions of U.S. drivers cross faulty or obsolete bridges every day, highway statistics show, but it's too costly to fix all these spans or adequately monitor their safety, says a University of Maryland researcher who's developed a new, affordable early warning system. This wireless technology could avert the kind of bridge collapse that killed 13 and injured 145 along Minneapolis' I-35W on Aug. 1, 2007, he says - and do so at one-one-hundredth the cost of current wired systems.

"Potentially hundreds of lives could be saved," says University of Maryland electrical engineering researcher Mehdi Kalantari. "One of every four U.S. highway bridges has known structural problems or exceeded its intended life-span. Most only get inspected once every one or two years. That's a bad mix."

Kalantari has created tiny wireless sensors that monitor and transmit minute-by-minute data on a bridge's structural integrity. A central computer analyzes the data and instantly warns officials of possible trouble. He plans to scale-up manufacture in the fall.

More than one-in-four U.S. highway bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to a 2009 estimate by the U.S. Society of Civil Engineers. Kalantari's sensors measure indicators of a bridge's structural health, such as strain, vibration, flexibility, and development of metal cracks. The sensors are small, wireless, rugged, and require practically no maintenance, he says.

...Newer "smart" bridges, including the I-35W replacement in Minneapolis, have embedded wired networks of sensors. But Kalantari says the cost is too high for use on older spans. "A wired network approach will cost at least 100 times more than a wireless alternative, and that's simply unaffordable given the strain on local, state, and federal budgets," Kalantari estimates....

...For almost a year, Kalantari has been testing his device in conjunction with the Maryland Department of Transportation, measuring the structural parameters of highway bridges in a real setting. This has enabled him to optimize the device's performance and energy consumption. His updated model is smaller and ten times more energy efficient than its predecessor....

Photo of the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse from the University of Maryland website