Alaska will build software to help inspect its bridges

The Federal Highway Administration awarded Alaska's transportation department $126,917 to develop computer vision tools — software that reads photographs of bridge components and flags and measures defects for inspectors. The federal money is part of a project totaling about $158,600, some of it from non-federal sources.

Alaska maintains roughly 1,000 bridges on public roads, inspected on a 24-month cycle. A 2001 Federal Highway Administration study found those routine visual inspections varied widely — condition ratings "varied over a range of up to five different ratings" across 49 state inspectors tested on trial bridges in the Lower 48.

The project includes field validation on actual bridge elements. But the software isn't meant to take over — FHWA guidance from 2024 says proven advanced technologies "may be used to supplement but not supplant bridge inspection personnel and inspection methods."