TITLE:
Research on a UAV-Based Inspection and Monitoring Scheme for Rural Bridges
AUTHORS:
Fanghua Chen, Shaofeng Yao
KEYWORDS:
Structural Health Monitoring, County Economy, Low-Cost Monitoring Technology, Vocational Education
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.16 No.10,
October
23,
2026
ABSTRACT: To address the problems that rural bridges are numerous and some are approaching the end of their service life, whereas the current manual visual inspection is labor-intensive and cannot rapidly cover a large number of bridges during flood seasons, this paper first establishes a hierarchical assessment system in which UAV inspection is the main means and manual inspection is the supplement. A two-level mechanism consisting of a UAV-based overview preliminary screening and a refined detailed investigation is proposed, and bridge condition is classified into three levels: Normal, Concern and Dangerous. For the stone arch bridges and concrete girder bridges most commonly found in rural areas, five key indicators are then determined, namely foundation scour of piers and abutments, deformation of the main structure, cracks in main load-bearing members, the deck system and ancillary facilities, and encroachment of the space beneath the bridge, and the UAV data acquisition scheme together with the rapid judgment criteria for each indicator are specified. Finally, a Bridge is taken as a case study for field verification. The results show that the proposed scheme can accomplish risk screening of bridges in a region.