Hydrologic technician Russ Miller navigates a remote-controlled acoustic Doppler current profiler into position to measure streeambed elevation at a highway bridge over the Payette River near Letha, Idaho.
Real-Time Bridge Scour Monitoring and Evaluation
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By Idaho Water Science Center
February 10, 2020
The most common cause of bridge failure is scour, when high-velocity streamflow scours streambed material from around bridge piers and abutments. As of 2017, the National Bridge Inventory listed 265 of Idaho's nearly 4,500 bridges (about 6 percent) as "scour critical." When rivers rise quickly, bridge inspectors have little or no time to mobilize and monitor bridges at risk of scour. Real-time bridge scour monitoring offers a way to remotely monitor sites and to collect long-term data for evaluation. This lowers monitoring costs and reduces the need for field crews to inspect bridges in potentially hazardous situations.
In cooperation with the Idaho Transportation Department, we have installed sonar devices at three Idaho bridges near existing USGS streamgage stations:
The devices transmit streambed elevation every 15 minutes to the nearby streamgages. That data, along with the other data collected by the streamgages, is then be published to the USGS National Water Information System for public access.
We will also collect hydraulic and geomorphic data to better understand the characteristics of each site. We will continue this pilot study into 2022 and will publish our findings then. Study results will help ITD to decide whether to continue monitoring these sites or to expand the network to other Idaho bridges.
The following multimedia items are associated with this project.
Verifying Bridge Scour Sonar Accuracy
Hydrologic technician Russ Miller navigates a remote-controlled acoustic Doppler current profiler into position to measure streeambed elevation at a highway bridge over the Payette River near Letha, Idaho.
The following multimedia items are associated with this project.
Verifying Bridge Scour Sonar Accuracy
Hydrologic technician Russ Miller navigates a remote-controlled acoustic Doppler current profiler into position to measure streeambed elevation at a highway bridge over the Payette River near Letha, Idaho.
Hydrologic technician Russ Miller navigates a remote-controlled acoustic Doppler current profiler into position to measure streeambed elevation at a highway bridge over the Payette River near Letha, Idaho.